All right, fine. I wrote another book about Superman.

I just finished a first draft of a book tentatively titled "Brains Beat Brawn Every Time: Superman's Transformation from Superhero to Culture Hero." As far as titles go, it's not quite so smooth as Superman in Myth and Folklore. 

I don't let anybody read first drafts. A few months ago I sent the first three chapters and an outline of the rest to the publisher, and they want to see the rest of it. But it's not quite ready. I've put the draft away for the next three weeks so I can work on designing classes for the fall semester and editing a book on Bloody Mary folklore. When that time is up, I'll start at the beginning and revise the whole book--then I'll send it to the publisher.

This book is the opposite of the first one. It's about folklore in comic books rather than comic books becoming folklore. No fieldwork this time. I read a whole bunch of books and then a whole bunch of scholarship on masculinity, history, sovereignty, liberty, heroism, humanism, folktales, metafiction, and other stuff I can't remember. This book has all the stuff about hero myths that people probably expected to be in Superman in Myth and Folklore, to the extent that anybody expected anything from that book.

Chapter 6 nearly drove me to drink.

There's a lot of work to do, but I think the first draft holds together nicely.

Alright, fine. I'll write another book about Superman.

The way that title is phrased makes it sound like people are bugging me to write another book on that subject. They aren't. I just feel like writing it. It doesn't have a good title yet (by which I mean that all the titles I come up with are not very good). It'll focus on folklore in the comics, in the form of folktales and hero stories, and I'll have some things to say about metafiction, culture heroes, and Bluebeard.

Should be fun.

Might as well post some Superman material: SYFY's oral history of the Death of Superman

Syfy's oral history. It's pretty long.

I read shortened versions of this in a variety of books about Superman as I did my research. I was also reading comics at this time (1992-1993). I wasn't reading Superman books, though, and I sort of missed the whole thing. I was aware of it, because it was hard not to be. But it didn't have much impact.

Here's editor Mike Carlin, at the end of the oral history:

We personally felt bad that characters like LOBO and The Punisher were being hailed as role models of some sort — and maybe it was our fault that Superman felt old-fashioned still. We were in a position to do something about it, or at least to TRY to do something about it, so we took that awkward opportunity of a postponed wedding and really made our point: Don't take Superman for granted — or he might not be there when you need him.

The Death of Superman was a product of its time.

New Job

When I was a graduate student working on my dissertation, I realized that I had one real goal for it: to get a job. That didn't so much work, and the reasons why aren't worth chronicling. I moved on to a larger, longer, more difficult project about Superman, still with the same goal.

It worked.

Well, technically, the Superman book got me an interview. From there I had to do the rest of the work in person. The book's release coincided with a good year for folklore jobs in North America, and so I applied several places. I returned to conferences for the first time in a while, too, to remind people in my field that I still exist, and to meet new folks, too.

The result: I'm now Assistant Professor of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. This fall I will teach Introduction to Folklore as well as a course on Urban Legends. Future courses include Folklore and Popular Culture, and whatever else comes up.

Right now I'm sitting in my new office, waiting for all my books to arrive and marveling at the resources I now have available. I undertook my Superman project without funding, without guidance, and without equipment. Things sure have changed.

Also, somehow I'm only a mile from the ocean. And if you head due east from where I am, there's only water between here and France. I saw some humpback whales the other day.

Book Release

Well, Superman in Myth and Folklore is now available. It's a little earlier than I expected, too. I got my copies a few weeks ago, and I'm pretty happy with the work the publisher did on it. It's a nice looking book.

I started this blog in 2009 to help me organize some of my research, specifically online sources. It still serves that purpose, but more, too. So I might keep it going.

Now that the book is out, I feel relieved. It's been a long process, and there was always the possibility that things wouldn't work out. No reviews are out yet.

Anyway, here are some places it's available. Amazon seems to have sold out of their initial supply. Barnes and Noble has it. And, surprisingly, Target.

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!

Catalog Copy

I'm not sure how long this has been up at the University Press of Mississippi website. I decided to check today, for whatever reason. There's no release date listed (it's among the "upcoming titles" in the Folklore catalog), but it will be available in November or December.

Superman in Myth and Folklore

By Daniel Peretti

208 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 16 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index
9781496814586 Printed casebinding $65.00S

How the Man of Steel leapt from panels and storyboards into folklore and myth

Superman rose from popular culture --comic books, newspaper strips, radio, television, novels, and movies-- but people have so embraced the character that he has now become part of folklore. This transition from popular to folk culture signals the importance of Superman to fans and to a larger American populace. Superman's story has become a myth dramatizing identity, morality, and politics.
Many studies have examined the ways in which folklore has provided inspiration for other forms of culture, especially literature and cinema. In Superman in Myth and Folklore, Daniel Peretti explores the meaning of folklore inspired by popular culture, focusing not on the Man of Steel's origins but on the culture he has helped create. Superman provides a way to approach fundamental questions of human nature, a means of exploring humanity's relationship with divinity, an exemplar for debate about the type of hero society needs, and an articulation of the tension between the individual and the community.
Through examinations of tattoos, humor, costuming, and festivals, Peretti portrays Superman as a corporate-owned intellectual property and a model for behavior, a means for expression and performance of individual identity, and the focal point for disparate members of fan communities. As fans apply Superman stories to their lives, they elevate him to a mythical status. Peretti focuses on the way these fans have internalized various aspects of the character. In doing so, he delves into the meaning of Superman and his place in American culture and demonstrates the character's staying power.
Daniel Peretti, Bloomington, Indiana, is an editor and folklorist. He lives with his wife and three sons.
208 pages (approx.), 6 x 9 inches, 16 b&w illustrations, bibliography, index

 

 

Best Stories in the World: The Uktena

In Cherokee myths, the sun is female, and she hates humanity because whenever people look up at her they scrunch up their faces against the bright light she shines. The moon, on the other hand, likes us.

Among the various beings populating the earth are the Little Men, who are the children of Kana'ti and Selu, who are the Lucky Hunter and Corn, respectively. Well, the Little Men are sort of their children, since one of them is definitely their son, but he doesn't have a name, and the other is really a wild boy (I'nage-utasun/hi: He-who-grew-up-wild) whom they seem to have kidnapped but might also just be their son whom they threw in the water and left there for a while until their other son started playing with him and then they brought back home; it's weird, especially since the boys eventually kill Selu because she's a witch, and in part this story explains why corn grows in only a few places and not everywhere, and also why there aren't as many wolves as there used to be, and the boys are also Thunder, and they're responsible for teaching people the right songs to sing for hunting deer...man, these stories are just great, aren't they?). The Little Men are also called the Thunder Boys, and they like to help people.

So the Sun wanted to kill all the people with her heat, out offrustration and jealousy, and the people asked the Little Men for help. They changed one of the men into a big snake, called Uktena, and sent him to kill the Sun. He failed because the sun was so bright, so they created a rattlesnake to do the job. Uktena was jealous and angry, so the people forced him to go away, though he left other snakes behind.

Uktena is said to be "as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head, and a bright, blazing crest like a diamond upon its forehead, and scales glittering like sparks of fire. It has rings or spots of color along its whole length, and can not be wounded except by shooting in the seventh spot from the head, because under this spot are its heart and its life." The diamond is known as ulûñsû’tĭ (which means transparent). It's an item of great power, but only one person has ever stolen it from the head of Uktena, since they're so dangerous. The jewel itself is dangerous, and has to be fed blood twice a year or it will kill the person who stole it and his family. However, it grants success in hunting, love, and other pursuits.

The only one to get one is called Âgăn-uni’tsĭ. He was a Shawano, who are all magicians. His name means The Ground-hog's Mother. He was about to be killed by his captors when they spared him because he promised to find the jewel. He had heard that the uktena would lie in wait in the haunted, dark passes of the Great Smoky Mountains. He went to one gap in the mountains, but found only a monster blacksnake. He went to another pass but found a moccasin snake. He went to a third pass he found a gigantic green snake, and he called all the Cherokee to see it, but they only ran away in fear. He kept going south, finding other monsters but not the one he sought until he arrived at Gahu/ti mountain, where the Uktena slept.

He laid a trap for the Uktena by digging a trench and surrounding it with a circle of burning pine cones. Then he shot the Uktena in its heart, under the seventh spot, and fled when it woke up. It chased him, though soon the wound overcame it. It died while spitting poison at him, but most of the poison was destroyed by the fire--all save a single drop, which struck him on the head. The blood that flowed from its wound, as poisonous as its venom, filled trench. In its death throes, the Uktena destroyed trees all along the mountain. The man called birds, which came to eat the monster's flesh and bones. 

Seven days later the magician and retrieved the gem from a tree branch, where a raven had dropped it after feasting. Returning to the village, the man became a great magician, though a tiny snake hung from the place where the venom had hit him. The Uktena's blood formed a lake, and there women dye the cane for their baskets.

I was reminded of this story by Daniel Bayliss and Fabian Rangel "Son of the Serpent," recently published as part of the Storyteller series of comics based on the old Jim Henson tv shows. It's a pretty good little comic, though it doesn't hew too closely to the Cherokee original recounted above. Bayliss says he combined several stories from different traditions.

I believe that I haven't done the Cherokee story justice here. It's a long tale, and in James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee it demonstrates the way myths often build on each other over time. Mooney numbers the myths he has collected, and the Uktena and the Little Men figure in tales 3, 5, 50, 51, and 52. You can find these stories here. Mooney was told this story by a man named Swimmer, another man named John Ax. There are many sources for the different parts, though. Here's one that's more recent, by David Michael Wolfe, which brings into the story the Tlanuhwa, which Bayliss and Rangel make the thunderbird.

There's something of a coda to this story later in Mooney's book. In a section called "Historical Traditions" the first story is "First Contact with Whites," in which Mooney writes

At the creation an ulûñsû’tĭ was given to the white man, and a piece of silver to the Indian. But the white man despised the stone and threw it away, while the Indian did the same with the silver. In going about the white man afterward found the silver piece and put it (351) into his pocket and has prized it ever since. The Indian, in like manner, found the ulûñsû’tĭ where the white man had thrown it. He picked it up and has kept it since as his talisman, as money is the talismanic power of the white man. This story is quite general and is probably older than others of its class.

 So why is this one of the best stories in the world? I like the way it sprawls through creation, hitting highs of heroism, oddity, absurdity, and sanctity. These stories, the symbols and characters in them, are semantically rich as well as narratively compelling. They've got a little of everything.

 

A Story Every Day: Who Cured the Princess?

Three brothers were left penniless after their parents die, so they decided to split up and make their way in the world, meeting again after ten years to compare stories.

The first brother traveled to India, where he became a magician. He got to know all the magic in India, and before ten years were up he learned to make a mirror that could show its bearer what was happening in far off lands as easily as it showed reflections.

The second traveled to the United States, and there he marveled at the wonders of technology. He became a pilot and engineer, and before ten years are up he built a fantastic plane that allowed him to circle the globe.

The third brother went to Nigeria, where he became a farmer. He grew apple trees in the fertile soil, and these became widely known for their heartiness and nutrition. Before ten years were up he discovered that his apples could cure diseases, both mundane and fatal.

The tenth anniversary saw these brothers reunited back home. They compared stories, and each was impressed with the others' but thought his own the most miraculous. The mirror was the first to be tested, and it showed the brothers the goings-on in a castle in northern Europe. There, the king was distraught at the illness of his eldest daughter. He prayed for a miracle, because she would not last the night.

It was time to test the airplane, and the brothers flew to northern Europe. They arrived at the castle in time to test the apple. They told the king of their powers, and the king didn't believe them. They assured the king of their efficacy, but he made them promise that, should the apples effect no cure, they would not resist a hanging for giving the king false hope.

The apple, of course, did its job. The king was thrilled, and he allowed the princess to choose one of the brothers to marry. However, after spending some time with them, she could not decide from amongst them. She asked which of them had saved her, but each had equal claim to that deed: the mirror invented by the first had revealed the problem, the plane built by the second had carried them quickly enough to perform the deed, and the apple had been the cure. The princess deferred to her younger sister, who thought a bit and then asked the brothers a single question each: "Was your object used up by the deed? The first two answered that it was not, since the plane was intact and the mirror still showed visions. Only the third said yes, since the apple was gone. The younger princess then said the farmer should be the prince.

All agreed. The other men married the other daughters of the King, and everyone lived happily ever after.



That story comes from Dov Noy's collection Folktales of Israel, translated by Gene Baharav, and retold in my own words. Noy collected it from a man named Moshe Kaplan, who heard it from an unnamed Polish rabbi, probably in the late 1950s or early 60s. Noy places it under tale type 653A, "The Rarest Thing in the World." Pretty good little story, eh?

Better than the Book: How to Train your Dragon

You guys read this book? It's by Cressida Cowell, and it's not bad. It's just not all that great, either. I never connected emotionally with Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III. I never really felt like anything of vital import was going to happen in the novel. Maybe that's because I read it when I was already about 35 years old. My son read it, and he liked it okay, but hasn't felt the need to read the rest of the series.

But the movie...the movie has music. Of course I have to bring that up, because the score is triumphant and inspiring. The whole score is worthwhile, but check out this part:

John Powell.

For whatever reason, after Hiccup's dragon Toothless has been revealed and Stoic has sailed off with it on his foolish errand, and Hiccup and Astrid are standing on the cliff and Astrid asks him what he's going to do, and he tries to dodge the question because he doesn't know, and Astrid won't let him because she wants to hear what he has to say, I get a little choked up. It's  because she trusts him, even more than he trusts himself.

Hiccup's a different sort of hero, and I appreciate that. Cerebral rather than physical, which is kind of the whole point of the movie. My kids love it because of the dragons--I don't think I've ever heard them talk about Hiccup at all, but they really get into the different types of dragons in the movies and shows. But I love it because there's something worthwhile in the human relationships. I would never have cared about that level of trust when I was a kid, but as an adult, as someone who feels like he's in that kind of relationship, I see it as laying the groundwork for understanding each other in my own children. Sometimes we need someone else to say that what we're doing is important, and that it can change the world, even just for a small group of people.

That said, I do think they missed an opportunity in the second movie when they didn't make Astrid the new chief.