The Best Stories in the World: Ylla

This is really just an excuse to include The Martian Chronicles, but that's more than one story. So..."Ylla." I've read this story a lot, maybe once every couple of years. I just keep coming back to it, to the despair and hope it captures. It's a reminder that someone's dream may be someone else's nightmare. Not kidding about the nightmare part--you ever see The Honeymoon?

See, there's this martian couple, and the wife keeps having this dream about a space ship landing, and the man who emerges. It begins like this:

They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfulls of magnetic dust, which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard, and the little distant Martian bone town was all enclosed, and no one drifted out their doors, you could see Mr. K himself in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play ah harp. And front the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle.

From that you can probably tell whether or not you'll like Bradbury's stuff. He certainly doesn't hold anything back, in terms of his style. That one paragraph establishes tone, history, and setting while hinting at character.

Soon enough, we learn that Mrs. and Mr. K are not happy these days. Their problem seems to stem from Mrs. K--Ylla--who is restless, waiting for something that's just not happening. She's tired of their life, I guess, and Yll neglects her. So she dreams of a man, obviously from Earth (at six feet he's a giant to the Martians, and his blue eyes are an absurdity to them, who have eyes of gold). The couple discuss her dream, dismissing it and at the same time Ylla wonders if it could be true that someone from Earth will come. She begins singing strange songs, talking in her sleep, dreaming the man in the rocket. And Yll becomes desperate, trying to pay attention to her like he should have before. He's jealous.

On the day her dream has predicted that the man from earth will arrive, Ylla says she's going to visit a friend beyond the green valley--the location the rocket is supposed to land. Yll makes an excuse to keep her home, then goes out "hunting." Ylla, at home, becomes agitated, waiting for something to happen. She feels it: "There was a warmth as of great fire passing in the air. A whirling, rushing sound. A gleam in the sky, of metal."

She dismisses it as a trick of the imagination. Then...

"A shot sounded."

There's more, of course. But it's better to read it in full then to endure my butchering summary.

Yeah, Bradbury has written better stories, more iconic stories ("Sound of Thunder" anyone?), but it seems trite to include one of them. "Ylla" doesn't get as much attention, though you can read an excerpt at raybradbury.com. It's also been adapted to theater, television, and radio. Martian Chronicles is my favorite of his books. Lots of good stories there, many of which were published independently. "Ylla" was originally titled "I'll Not Ask for Wine" and published in Maclean's in 1950. That's from Wikipedia, so make of it what you will. Like I said, there's not much on the Internet about this one.

So what makes it one of the best in the world?In thirteen pages, Bradbury combines just enough world building with character work and a satisfying conclusion. Maybe "satisfying" is the wrong word. It's more like a punch in the gut.

Different Perspectives

Quitely and Grant

Since I've posted quite a bit about All-Star Superman in the past, I thought I'd do so again.

Here's a link to a long article about the ray bradbury reference in the first issue.

 The writers at Hooded Utilitarian didn't buy into the general praise of the series, and they offer a series of insightful articles about why. This first one by Noah Berlatsky discusses how All-Star feels decadent, a retread of the silver age stories that never quite captures their true feeling. Here's another he wrote on the same subject.

I borrowed Berlatsky's scan of the sea dragon, art by Marley for the Korean comic Dokebi Bride. Looks amazing.

This next one by Berlatsky is a comparison of two images, one of Superman and the other of a big dragon. Here's a follow-up. I wanted to post these stories in part to give an alternate perspective on All-Star Superman, and the art of Frank Quitely. The writer shows the images in part to point out how the superhero image suffers by comparison. There's something worth quoting here:

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would—but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe—a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability—is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed—he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed.

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

The point here is that super-hero comics very rarely have a strong sense of wonder. With all the spectacular feats, you’d think they would — but somehow they all end up as tricks; they’re fun and goofy, or I guess more recently bloody, but they don’t actually inspire awe. And I think it’s because of something Tom said, “Superman keeps the universe our size.” Super-heroes are there to make things more manageable. Awe — a sense of vastness, of human insignificance or vulnerability — is antagonistic to everything they stand for. If Superman saw that dragon, he wouldn’t be scared or impressed — he’d just punch it in the snout. (As Wonder Woman did in a similar situation..) There’d be big explosions! There’d be excitement! There’d be action! But there wouldn’t be a moment where you said, “oh my god,” and felt rooted to one particular spot, and overwhelmed. - See more at: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2009/04/nowhere-man-somewhere-dragon/#sthash.OQBMq6hq.dpuf

It's certainly an interesting perspective on superhero comics. On the same website, Tom Crippen discusses Superman at length. He warns that it's a idiosyncratic perspective, and everything I've found in my own study of what people do with the character sort of works differently. Crippen wonders about the religious connections, the mythical nature of Superman, and I deal with that a lot (though not exhaustively--I pulled everything about Superman and the hero myth out of my book, though that seems really weird; it may be an article some day, if I can pare it down from the 70 pages it currently takes up). Anyway, here's a key point of Crippen's article:


There’s my Superman. He’s modernity. It’s what he stands for, and he grows directly out of it. He’s the odd doodle our collective mind drew when the second-by-second experience of modern existence, the way modernity feels, became impossible to ignore. “Super,” the category he embodies, represents the new dimension added to existence by technological development. The most extreme transformations in our physical environment are now produced by means we find unreal and abstract, that feel like they have nothing to do with us; he’s there to bridge the gap.

He also writes: When I was reading Superman, I was getting ready for a lifetime of user manuals and tax forms. All right, I'm bitter.

This is all interesting stuff, and worth thinking about. For Crippen, Superman is all about modernity. For both these writers, Superman isn't enough. He doesn't work in a beneficial way. For Berlatsky, there's no inspiration, no sense of wonder. One result of my own research, which involved interviewing people about what they do with Superman, is that I found Superman to be the inspiration these writers don't find. That's an awkward sentence, but the point is that plenty of people work to make the world a better place, modeled on their interpretation of Superman. The scholar Ben Saunders, in his book Do the Gods Wear Capes?, finds in Superman an evolving meditation on the nature of virtue, something that everyone I interviewed also indicated in one way or another. What Superman does is much less important than what we do with Superman in mind.

Cover by Mike Allred

Now, I talked to Superman fans, so they are predisposed to find useful things in Superman stories. When Berlatsky discusses the sense of awe, he's really getting at something religious, Rudolph Otto's sense of the numinous. That's not what Superman does. He's secular. I'm not saying that this makes Quitely's image of Superman in the sun any more valuable (in fact, nobody I talked to mentioned this image as being particularly meaningful to them); what I'm saying is that these writers don't find Superman valuable in the way that other people do. And that's fine. Personally, I like reading all the different perspectives, and both Berlatsky and Crippen make some really interesting points. Well worth reading.

While we're on the subject of Morrison's Superman, here are a few articles on his Action Comics run from a little while a go. From the Mindless Ones. And more. And on Morrison.

And while we're on the subject of awe-inducing images of sea monsters, I've always like this one, from the World's End volume of Sandman, by penciller Michael Zulli, inker Dick Giordano, and colorist Daniel Vozzo: