Who is Killing the Great Capes of Heropa?

by Andrez Bergen

  Vita-Rays: part of the Super-Soldier Serum that speeds up the potion’s effects

  Von Dutch: custom vehicle painter and pin- striper

  Walter Plunkett: prolific costume designer and among Hollywood’s great style designers

  Walk in the Black Forest, A: Oft-parodied instrumental easy-listening tune by Horst Jankowski, released in 1965

  Wonder Woman: Amazonian DC heroine created by William Moulton Marston, with artist Harry George Peter, in 1941

  Zorro: dashing, black-clad Robin Hood-like masked outlaw and master swordsman living in the Spanish colonial era, created in 1919 by pulp writer Johnston McCulley

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First up, the shout-outs to relatives and mates — specifically my wife Yoko and my daughter Cocoa for their constant support, encouragement and indulgence, since without them none of this would be bound, on screen, or still gracing little scraps of paper.

  Thanks to mum Fée, dad Des, and nan June (who once procured copies of Ripley’s Believe It or Not from the local book exchange in Burleigh Heads), Peter (original owner of that Richmond stash), cuz Zoe, Briony, Tim, Seb, Alby, Dames, Devin, Pete, Kris, Danielle, Nikki, Mikey, Jason, Wolfgang, Trish, Bas, Baz, Camille, Marce, the IF? Records posse, Yoshiko & the ETM crew here in Tokyo, and Brian Huber (the real Milkcrate Man).

  Much appreciation must also punt in the direction of the editors, fellow authors, artists, critics and people who bother to read my stuff — and let me know how they felt about it. In particular, Marcus, Elizabeth, Fiona, Renee, Stefan, Mihai, Katy, Josh, Heath, Chris, Dakota, Jack, Dan, Guy, Joe, Kevin, Jacob, Zoe, Lee, Jessica, Lori, Liv, Travis, Josh, Mckay, Lloyd, Gordon, Craig, Caleb, Tony, Benoit, Guy, Chad, Chris TM, Gerard, Jonny, Ryan, Liam, Bernard, and the original browsers of this particular manuscript (you know who you are, since your monikers appear in God-hopefully bold type print elsewhere in this tome!) — each of whom gave invaluable feedback.

  I’ll doff a quick hat to the Jack Kirby Museum, Comic Bastards, The Momus Report, the Booked Podcast, Forces Of Geek, Crime City Central, ComicsOnline.com, Sons Of Spade, Angry Robot, LitReactor, Books and Booze, Nerd Culture Podcast, Zouch, Farrago, Bleeding Cool, Shotgun Honey, Longbox Graveyard and Slit Your Wrists.

  But I wouldn’t be hammering together this hack acknowledgements section of a published book without the belief of people like Another Sky Press — who gave me my first bona fide break with Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat in 2011 — and Phil Jourdan and everyone else at Perfect Edge Books…who gave me my next. Phil in particular has proven himself as much a best buddy as he is an ally, like-minded sod and publisher, while my editors Dominic C. James and Trevor Greenfield do a great job tidying up my wayward prose. Wunderbar support has also come from John Hunt and Maria Maloney.

  I owe a sizeable debt to the international cast of artists involved here, stellar talent unto themselves: Rodolfo for the fantastic cover concept, and other cool art by Paul, Giovanni, Maan, Javier, Juan, Harvey, Fred, Hannah, Loka, Andrew, Dave, Kohana, Saint Y, Carlos, Marcin, Joe, Tsubomi, Drezz, Van, Milton, Yata, Wally, Israel, Lorrie, Sho and Cocoa.

  In order to gain clarity regarding the future dystopia of Melbourne, the nature of the politics, idInteract, Wolram Deaps, the Richmond comics stash, ‘Deviancy’ and some of the characters that flit through these pages, it might be worthwhile checking out my previous novels Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat (you can grab a free digital version from anotherskypress.org) and One Hundred Years of Vicissitude, also out through Perfect Edge.

  And there’s still more for me to offer up their dues.

  This novel would never have brewed, infused and decanted without two essential ingredients that first grabbed me as a child and have continued to stalk my senses as a somewhat older kid: American comicbooks from the silver and bronze ages (basically the late 1950s to mid ’80s) and the noir/detective yarns of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett written a couple of decades before that.

  Chandler’s short stories ‘Goldfish’, ‘Finger Man’ and ‘Killer in the Rain’ figured lightly; also in the mix are several different Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Erewhon: or, Over the Range by Samuel Butler, Hammett’s Red Harvest playing minor fiddle, H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, E. H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art, and Dr. Seuss’ I Wish that I Had Duck Feet.

  Getting back to the comics, I was always (mostly) a Marvel fan, forever enamoured with the written words of Stan Lee in collusion with Jack Kirby (script/pencils) and Joe Sinnott (inks) when they together worked a kind of magic on the mid ’60s direction of Fantastic Four from #44 (which coincided with the unveiling of the Inhumans). I also love The Avengers yarns in 1968 concocted by writer Roy Thomas and artist John Buscema — along with the astounding artistic inroads of both Kirby and Jim Steranko later that decade on Captain America and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

  But it wasn’t just the Americans who made an impression. I remember spending hours in the school library entranced with the adventures of Tintin, and my dad bought me subscriptions to British comics Cor!!, Action (with the brilliant strips ‘Hook Jaw’ and ‘Death Game 1999’) and finally 2000 AD, when it kicked off in 1977.

  There’s so much I could waffle on about here, if I haven’t done so already, without meaning to bore you senseless. Each and every facet deserves the acknowledgement; it’s just going to have to be compressed.

  So, here is a list of the more worthy TV stuff: Disney’s Zorro (1957-59), Star Trek (the original series), Comic Strip Presents, Department S, PreCure — especially the ‘HeartCatch’ season (2010-11) —The Goodies, Kamen Rider, Blackadder, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Space: 1999, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, both gigs of Battlestar Galactica, The Mentalist, F Troop, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Doctor Who, Lost in Space, Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer, UFO, Spyforce, The Twilight Zone, Batman, The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Superman, and Red Dwarf.

  I also grew up with Americanized versions of Japanese anime classics like Janguru Taitei (Kimba the White Lion), Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor) and, later on, the original Japanese videos of Project A-Ko, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor and Macross — while discovering the joys of manga done by Yukito Kishiro, Katsuhiro Otomo and Masamune Shirow. After finishing uni, over brekky before working a horrendous corporate job, I was mesmerized by the telly romps of Sailor Moon.

  But whom am I kidding?

  Anyone who knows me would skip into a long harangue that I’m a movie buff more than much else, as inclined to gush about John Huston’s take on Hammett (The Maltese Falcon) and Howard Hawks’ interpretation of Chandler (The Big Sleep) as I am Blake Edwards’ dust-down of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Basil Rathbone de-vilifying himself to squeeze beneath Sherlock Holmes’ deerstalker.

  Further cinema/DVDs making tsunami in this tome? Singin’ in the Rain, Peter Pan, Johnny Guitar, Paprika, Inception, Dark Knight, Take the Money and Run, Matrix, Mr. Winkle Goes to War, The Lavender Hill Mob, Stray Dog: Kerberos Panzer Cops, Dark City, Hard Boiled, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Third Man, Rain, Niagara, The Blue Max, Magnetic Rose, Taxi Driver, Millennium Actress, Jin-Roh, RoboCop, Batman, X-Men, Thor, Forbidden Planet, Batman Begins, You’re in the Navy Now, The Avengers, Captain America, Casshern, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Avalon, From Russia With Love, Dark Passage, Mystery Men, Star Wars (only episodes IV-VI), Innocence, Watchmen, Seven Samurai, Iron Man, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, Superman and the Mole Men, Blade Runner, Star Trek (the 2009 reboot), Perfect Blue, Brazil, Kick-Ass, Nausicaä, the kaiju classics (Godzilla, Mothra, et al), Gone with the Wind, and La Chauve-Souris with Alessandra Ferri & Massimo Murru.

  And yet, yep, this novel wears cheap comic-paper art on its soiled shirtsleeve.

  Comicbooks and strips — along with those publications’ creators — that I’ve directly riffed on, nipped, tucked, and/or misleadingly winked at include multiple issues of Kirby & Lee’s run on Fantastic Four, as well as the duo’s work with Captain America, Strange Tales, Avengers, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Command
os, X-Men, and Tales to Astonish.

  Also I should mention DC Comics’ Mr. District Attorney, the Skrull Kill Krew, Marvel’s Rawhide Kid and Two-Gun Kid, Harold Gray’s Little Orphan Annie, DC’s Secret Hearts #83 (the issue Roy Lichtenstein plundered for ‘Drowning Girl’), Warren Publishing’s Eerie comics, Wonder Woman, Barbarella creator Jean-Claude Forest, Pete Loveday, Judge Dredd, and even Uncle Scrooge comic #17.

  Hergé’s work remains a favourite years after I should’ve grown out of it, and I’m not inclined to forget American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar, Bob Kane, the illustrious Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, June Mills (a.k.a. comic artist Tarpé Mills) with Miss Fury, Jerry Robinson, Bryan Talbot, Battle Angel Alita, the Franklin Flagg (real name unknown) creation Captain Freedom, One Piece, Timely Comics, Mark Millar, Action Comics #1, Les Gouttes de Dieu (a Japanese manga series about wine) created by Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, N.C. Wyeth, Yoshihiko Umakoshi, Moira Bertram, the 1940 Porky Pig cartoon Africa Squeaks, Carl Burgos (creator of the original Human Torch), Fawcett Comics’ Bulletgirl and Baron von Gatz, Holyoke Publishing’s Chop Suey, Standard Comics’ Faceless Phantom, Marty Goodman, artist Morris and writer Rene Goscinny’s fictional outlaws The Daltons (who regularly appeared in the Franco-Belgian cowboy comic Lucky Luke), War Picture Library, occasional copies of The Flash and Supergirl in the ’70s — and the great Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

  While I still cherish Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith’s work in the first twelve issues of Conan the Barbarian from 1970, especially when Sal Buscema was doing the inks, influence from comics later than the 1960s and early ’70s (in the era people these days call the bronze age) helped fuel my teenage inclinations. Following on from Conan, I dug the early issues of Frank Thorne’s run with Red Sonja that started in 1977 — the same year a young Canadian named John Byrne lent his art to writer Jim Shooter and dragged me right back into The Avengers with #164.

  By 1980 Byrne, with Chris Claremont doing spot-on scripts, made the Uncanny X-Men his own over #108-143, and their collaboration on the Dark Phoenix saga was a staggering thing to go through at the time. And then there was Daredevil. Artist/writer Frank Miller’s work with inker Klaus Janson on that title from 1979 was breathtaking, culminating (for me) in the superb #181 three years later. I also loved Miller’s subsequent work in 1986 on DC’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, with Janson again doing inks and canny colours courtesy of Lynn Varley.

  Growing up in Australia we had Lee Falk’s Phantom comics published fortnightly via Frew Publications, while in the Melbourne Herald newspaper John Dixon’s strip Air Hawk and the Flying Doctors was printed almost daily. Speaking of newsprint, I’d be remiss to ignore Calvin and Hobbes and the early (funnier) strips of Wizard of Id and B.C. Johnny Hart’s B.C. was a huge influence on my first and only comic strip ‘funny’ Up the Front, created in school — and since safely buried out of sight.

  Cameo-ing in this novel are denizens of another strip: Escape Goat, Air Gal, Capitol Hill and the Felon Fighters are the creations of cool American artist Denver Brubaker. I asked him for permission to give a shout-out here. The same with contemporary Aussie comicbook heroes Vesper (Matt Nicholls/Ross Stewart), The Soldier (Paul Mason), McBlack (Jason Franks) and That Bulletproof Kid (Matt Kyme/Arthur Strickland), who squeeze in for a deserved wink.

  Further thanks to Maxwell Newton’s Newton Comics (set up in Melbourne in the mid-1970s to re-release silver-age Marvel), pioneering Aussie strip creators Syd Nicholls (Fatty Finn) and Jimmy Bancks (Ginger Meggs), and the B&W Giant Batman Albums of the 1970s that reran classic ’50s Batman & Robin yarns, published by Planet Comics/KGM in Australia. Melbourne is pivotal here, not just in the novel. Like Jacob, I discovered a treasure trove of silver-age Marvel Comics in a shed in a back yard (my grandparents’) in Duke Street, Richmond — packed in snail-trailed cardboard boxes beneath crates of my nan’s burnished kitchen utensils and a seriously disturbing ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Dummies aside, most of all here I intend to pay respect to the creators — the writers, pencilers, inkers, and occasionally colourists — who made the most impact because of the astounding work they did in the 1960s.

  Yep, the kids Jacob meets in this novel, back in Melbourne at the idI arcade Tower of the Elephant — Roy, Barry and Sal — are vaguely modelled after Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith and Sal Buscema (John Buscema’s younger brother), who did such creative, mind-bending stuff at Marvel in the late 1960s and early ’70s.

  While I was mostly influenced by the Marvel Bullpen in New York (dominated by North Americans), some outstanding DC and Gold Key types, a few oddball Europeans, Brits and Australians, and a couple of Japanese slip in here as well.

  This book is therefore dedicated to Lee, Thomas, Steranko, Windsor-Smith, Sinnott, Colletta, Tuska, Klein, the Brothers Buscema, Don Heck, Steve Ditko, Gene Colan, John Romita, Syd Shores, George Roussos (a.k.a. George Bell), Stan Goldberg, Artie Simek, John & Marie Severin, Jack Keller, Carl Burgos, Sam & Joe Rosen, Paul Reinman, Dick Ayers, Wally Wood, Bill Everett, Chic Stone, Mike Esposito, Gary Friedrich, Neal Adams, Dan Adkins, Carmine Infantino, Gardner Fox, Joe Kubert, John Tartaglione, Jack Davis, Larry Lieber, Steve Parkhouse, Frank Giacoia (a.k.a. Frank Ray), Herb Trimpe, Sol Brodsky, Johnny Craig, Len Wein, Archie Goodwin, Dennis O’Neil, Julius Schwartz, Tom Palmer, Robert Bernstein, Bob Brown, Joe Orlando, Arnold Drake, Joe Certa, John Celardo, Dan DeCarlo, Dick Giordano, Ross Andru, Mike Sekowsky, Sy & Dan Barry, John Dixon, Irv Watanabe, Maurice Bramley, Stan Pitt, Bill Lignante, Ramona Fradon, Sid Greene, Tony Abruzzo, Roy Lichtenstein, Hergé, Will Eisner, Mœbius, Osamu Tezuka, Lee Falk, Jean-Claude Forest, Mitsuteru Yokoyama, Joe Colquhoun, Don Lawrence, Hugo Pratt, Ron Vivian, and all the other unmentioned, toiling masters behind 1960s comicbook bliss.

  But most of all? For Jack ‘King’ Kirby — thank you.

  Essential comicbook back reading: Some highlights

  X-Men #1 (Sept. 1963)

  I got wrapped up in the early antics of the X-Men — namely Beast (the stand-out for me), Angel (number two), Cyclops, Marvel Girl & Iceman — and the way in which they were feared and misunderstood by regular people in the burgeoning tale first unfolded by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Once the title was revived in 1975 it took me some time to adapt — although I did pick up #94 for just 10c at a school fête in Melbourne and sadly sold it a few years later for $150 to help pay the rent. In this baptismal issue, we had the blue-and-yellow-clad teen mutants up against the mightily evil Magneto, their ongoing nemesis — and a fellow who looked pretty neat in a scarlet Corinthian helmet.

  Avengers #4 (March 1964)

  I picked this up in black-and-white thanks to Newton Comics’ re-release in Australia in the mid ’70s, and here we had golden-age hero Captain America revived from suspended animation after a nap that took the better part of 20 years. While great to see the fledgling Avengers at play, as handled by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, it’s more fun witnessing Cap’s first moments as a man-out-of-time.

  Fantastic Four #25 (April 1964)

  The Thing versus the Hulk — subtitled ‘The Battle of the Century!’. ‘Nuff said. But we also have some of blue-eyed Benjamin’s best ever one-liners, mesmerizing fisticuffs that destroy a few city blocks (along with a speedboat, a bus, and a bridge), the rampaging Hulk, a shoe-in from the Avengers, and Jack Kirby really starting to find his visual voice. I never get tired of this one. You’ll need to get #26 to see the finale, but #25 is better.

  Fantastic Four #27 (June 1964)

  Story and art by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, inks by George Roussos (as George Bell), and lettering by Sam Rosen. Basically Reed Richards, the group’s leader, flies off the handle in an uncharacteristically jealous rage when his girlfriend Sue Storm is kidnapped by the Sub-Mariner — a man she digs perhaps as much as she does Reed. This was the first Fantastic Four comic I read, part of my older half-brother’s collection at Duke Street, Richmond, though his was lacking the front cover. I discovered it when I was
about 6, fell in head-over-heels with the quartet (and Kirby), and never looked back. While the Human Torch appealed to me, it was Benjamin J. Grimm, a.k.a. the unfortunate-looking, orange-skinned Thing that won me over. He’s remained one of my preferred characters ever since. Lee and Kirby had him pushing perfection from about #21 onwards.

  Avengers #21 & #22 (Oct. & Nov. 1965)

  Another discovery in the Richmond treasure-trove in a box in a spider-ridden shed, this time we had Stan Lee (writer), Don Heck (pencils) and Wally Wood (inks) relating the messy break-up of a bickering super team I hadn’t encountered previously. The sense of pathos was fascinating here, and the part where the Avengers disband rocked the pre-adolescent me — even while I wondered why Captain America had fish-scales on his costume. I only later realized the scales in fact represented chain mail.

  Fantastic Four #51 (June 1966)

  For me one of the best ever issues of Fantastic Four, subtitled ‘This Man…This Monster!’ A Jack Kirby cover, with Jack Kirby’s art inside inked by Joe Sinnott wrapped perfectly around Stan Lee (and likely some of Kirby’s) words. And what a story of angst and redemption. Some of you may have guessed that the Thing was a heavy influence on my character the Brick in Heropa. Here — as well as in #25 — you find out why.

  Avengers #52 (May 1968)

  Of course a mad-looking guy with a scythe on a cover done by John Buscema, with the tags ‘The Grim Reaper’ and ‘The Man Who Killed the Avengers’ would drag forth any impressionable kids. But inside the mag, the story by Roy Thomas and further art of Buscema (inked by Vince Colletta) was a stunning romp in which new arrival the Black Panther is accused of — yes — doing away with three of our heroes. Thomas and Buscema tweaked a stunning run on the title, with other standouts being #53, #55, and #56-61.