Why Superman?

When I started my research on Superman, I didn't stop to consider why I would want to write about that particular topic. As I wrote the book and delivered lectures and conference papers on Superman, the reasons started becoming obvious. I don't mean the reasons why I chose Superman in the academic sense (I actually describe the reasons in the preface to the book, which may come out next year...). I mean personal reasons. There are several.

I'd finished my doctoral work; my dissertation was about Prometheus in American culture. It was a good project, and I didn't even have to revise it after my defense. A lot of people will turn their dissertations into a book, but I didn't want to do that. I had chosen a project that turned out to be pretty easy, and I wanted a challenge, so: Superman.

I get into this a bit in the book itself: that I wanted to write about something people love in a visceral, foundational way. Prometheus is interesting to people, but for the most part I missed the window on that by about eighteen hundred years. Pausanias writes about the torch races in the Promethea way back when, and that's exactly what I was looking for.

Instead, I've got the Superman Celebration. And comic book stores (I didn't spend nearly enough time in those for this book). These are just as good; better, in fact, because they're happening now.

But beyond convenience, I was in fact a Superman fan when I was a toddler. I was so much a fan that I insisted on wearing my underoos, complete with cape, when we left the house. My parents discouraged this--their logic was the the bunched up cape made it look like I'd pooped my pants. I did not let this deter me. I was Superman, so nothing could deter me.

This behavior stopped about the age of four, when I discovered baseball. So when I was 32, I returned to Superman. This time, I wasn't a fan, though. I don't think I am even after all the research. I'm still not a Superman fan in any concrete sense of the word. I don't collect the comics or attend events, or watch the shows. I didn't even see Batman v Superman in the theater. I am a fan, however, of Superman fans. I kind of aspire to be one.

That's why Superman.

Whatever Happened to Hubba Bubba?

In the days of yore I would go to the local drug store (M&R Drugs at the time, then Arbor Drugs, now CVS) to buy comics, rootbeer, Kit Kats, and whatever other shiny things struck my fancy. Eventually I had other things to buy than rootbeer, drug stores stopped selling comics, and my interest in bubble gum waned.

I didn't think about gum for maybe twenty-five years. Then, I had kids. My oldest has no interest in gum, but my second child, he loves it. Gum, mints, really anything. So he asked for some gum when we were at a CVS recently, and I lead him to the candy section. To my surprise, there was an assortment of, basically, Trident. There was some Mentos gum, and other brands, but they were all, without exception, adult-oriented gums. Not a single oddity among them, nothing that would make the eight-year-old me want to buy them. They were all pale in color, mint-based, and kind of dull. He got some gum, and even seemed happy with it, but I felt like I'd been betrayed.

Okay, not betrayed, but maybe that a piece of my childhood had vanished without my knowledge.

Okay, not even that. I just thought it was odd that none of the gum of my youth was available in that store. No Hubba Bubba, no Bubblicious, no Bubble Tape, Fruit Stripe, nothing. I promptly forgot about the whole thing.

Then, Rom...in which I found this ad from 1980:

I remember this ad campaign, in which two kids would square off in an old west town, trying to see who could blow the best bubble. There's a record of these commercials on Youtube, too.

Gum fighters. Clever.

So I decided to see if Hubba Bubba is still out there. Turns out, it is.

It's made by Wrigley, the same folks who bring you the Chicago Cubs. Their website even has a nice little timeline detailing everything about the brand since its first appearance in 1979. At some point in the 1980s, they ceased producing this brand (for reasons unstated, though it was probably low sales), then they acquired Bubble Tape in 2003, and brought back Hubba Bubba in 2004. As recently as 2015 they have introduced new flavors (mostly based on soft drinks, which I recall seeing back in the days of yore).

Looks like the bubble gum industry is still there (or is there once again, after a hiatus). All kinds of it are available places like this.The Wikipedia entry even has a picture of gum available in Australia and New Zealand.

So there's that.

Superman in Myth and Folklore available for preorder

And you can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. You might as well order it. Where else are you going to read about Superman cookie jars, the best material for making your own cape, and the various smells of Metropolis, Illinois, during the second weekend of June?

Better than the Book: Re-Animator

I'm a relative newcomer to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. I read At the Mountains of Madness long ago, but then kind of forgot about it. With all the attention Alan Moore has given to Lovecraft lately, I decided it was time to dig into it. I started with "The Dunwich Horror" and moved through his best, "The Shadow over Innsmouth," to some others. The worst of what he's written is, I think, "Herbert West, Reanimator." It's just not a very good story.

As a developmental editor, I spend a lot of time suggesting ways for writers to improve their stories. One suggestion I often make is for writers to show instead of tell. Yeah, it's the basic thing you learn in high school, that dramatizing the interactions of human beings is probably going to be more interesting than a summary of that interaction. Usually, it means going into detail: giving us the dialogue, being descriptive when chronicling action, stuff like that. Showing through words.

Lovecraft's story is virtually all telling. It covers years and years of West's activities through, through the filter of his friend/roommate/collaborator. And it's got a bit more of a mythology of the reanimation, for lack of a better word, that ties together the separate sections, and gives more personality to most of the reanimated corpses. But it doesn't really work. As I read, I felt like I was looking through a fogged up window at the events going on. I never got a good sense of any of it.

The movie version is, however, rather intense. Of course, as film, it becomes much easier to show events. But Stuart Gordon's film, though it does have a lot of dialogue, almost doesn't need it. The visuals alone would be all you'd need for the most part, and even the scenes in which there's a lot of talking (I'm thinking of our introduction to West as he criticizes the doctors at the university), could be glossed over with a title card or two. It could be a silent movie.

The movie is tense where the prose is lethargic.  This is one example of the filmmakers seeing something worthwhile in the source and jettisoning everything else. It works.

The beginning of a journey through comics, with Rom.

Over the past few years I've been slowly putting together a full run of the Marvel Rom comics from a few decades ago. It started when I saw a batch of them at Vintage Phoenix in Bloomington. I got about twenty of them for a couple of bucks, and the ones I read seemed pretty good, so I figured why not get them all?

I stuck to physical retailers, and I never made special trips just to look for them, but whenever I was in a comic shop, I'd look for them. Until just recently, anyway, I kept to that. Then, when I'd exhausted the supply in the shops in Fort Wayne, Indy, various places in Michigan...I got sick of not finding then and bought the last four I needed on ebay. In doing so, I increased the average cost of issues to about $0.75 in all, including the shipping on those last four (which were issues 5, 11, 60, and 61).

Rom: Spaceknight began publication with a December 1979 date for issue 1, so it was probably out in October or so. It was an early toy tie-in comic, though apparently the toy line only ever had one figure in it, of Rom himself. The whole series ran 75 issues and 4 annuals.

Comic Vine has a little history of Rom, including the Marvel and newer IDW comics. The (sadly) defunct Comics Alliance has a lengthier version, which I haven't read in its entirety because it's got a rundown of the plots and whatnot. Io9 has a write-up on it, too.

Here's an article, written because the guy who directed the Guardians of the Galaxy movies likes Rom, from Comic Book Resources. There's a bog of legalities surrounding Rom.

So the toy was tabula rasa when Marvel got the rights to it, just something put out there by Parker Brothers. Marvel gave it to the writer Bill Mantlo, and he came up with the ideas surrounding the look of the character. Basically, Rom is a cyborg who gave up his humanity in order to be able to fight space villains called Dire Wraiths, who had attacked his people and who were in the process of taking over the earth in order to build their power. Sal Buscema drew the first issues.

Seven years later: Beta Ray Bill.

 Anyway, I've finally got the entire series, so I'm going to read it straight through. I'll post occasionally about the worthwhile stuff in these, such as the opening narration:

The comet appeared out of nowhere, catching earth's early-warning systems off-guard! If it was a comet! Ground-based radar tracked it down, losing it finally in the lower altitudes over West Virginia! A seismograph registered its impact in the Allegheny Mountains! Tomorrow, somebody from the university will investigate...

...if there is a tomorrow!

How's that for a start? Just look at all those exclamation points!