Timelessness and relevance

I don’t remember what prompted it but a couple of years back my friend Ross Bagby and I got into a discussion of how a lot of 20th century fiction came off, intentionally or not, as timeless.

Consider Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason novels. I discovered them in 1968 or 1969 when my Aunt May stayed over with a copy of Case of the Duplicate Daughter in her suitcase. I read it and presto, hooked on the series, which I continued to read avidly until I went to college in 1976 (I still read them after that, but not as consistently). I know now that Perry’s literary career began in the 1930s and that many of the books I read — Case of the Restless Redhead, Case of the Green-Eyed Sister, Case of the Terrified Typist — dated back to the 1950s. Nothing made my younger self think they came from that far in the past.
As a kid I was also a fan of Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings books, a humorous series about ten and 11-year-old boys at a small prep school. I imagined Jennings as my contemporary, slightly older but a child of my generation. Nothing in the books suggested otherwise. It wasn’t until TYG bought me an omnibus of the first four novels as a Christmas gift that I discovered they were a product of the 1950s. Jennings Follows a Clue came out in 1951; Jennings and his sidekick Darbyshire were 10, which made them 17 years older than me. It didn’t show.

The point Ross made was that by the late 1960s, many such timeless series suddenly became time-bound. From what I’ve read about the later Jennings books (after I left England I no longer followed the series), the early 1970s dragged him out of school and into the contemporary world. Superboy, who’d existed in a vaguely pre-WW II setting for a long time, adopted a sliding time-scale in 1971 that put Clark’s teenage adventures 15 years behind the current year of Superman.

Other series faded away around the same time. The steady stream of Tarzan films through the decades became an irregular trickle. The Dr. Mabuse series in Germany ran out of steam (though various films would carry on the name off and on in the coming years). British hero Bulldog Drummond gave up the ghost in 1969.

In comics, Blackhawk, which had soldiered on with minimal change since the 1950s, bit the dust after the infamously disastrous attempt to become contemporary superheroes. Lois Lane, drawn for years like this —— got a fashion update.

(For the record, I’m not arguing all of this stems from a common cause but it is remarkable what a transition point/extinction event this period was).

In comics, the late 1960s (the point I’ve reached in my Silver Age reread) were also the point “relevance” became a buzzword. When Americans were protesting a war and demanding social change, why were comics wasting time on superheroes fighting supervillains? Why not tackle the real evils of our time — Vietnam, Nixon, racism, pollution! In the words of later Green Lantern/Green Arrow story, even if superheroes save the world, what have they done for the black folks lately?

Comics have, as they say, always been political. Whether punching Hitler ——punching commies like the Crusher—
— or teaching man that thy name is — brother!Nevertheless, the “relevant” era felt different to me. More earnest, more heavy-handed, more self-conscious about being political. Willing to sacrifice entertainment value in favor of preaching, like Wonder Woman battling to expose fashion-industry sweatshops.By mid-1968, the first stirrings are obvious. In Green Lantern #61, for instance, Mike Friedrich and Gil Kane give us “Thoroughly Modern Mayhem.” Alan Scott begins feeling his crimefighting efforts are futile—

—so he uses his ring to erase evil from the world. That doesn’t work of course, as we all have evil inside us. Alan feels even more dispirited after his failure until Hal sets him straight with an inspiring speech.

Friedrich would do a lot more “relevant” storytelling in the years to come. I’m not looking forward to wading through it.

Another example of the trend to relevance was DC’s Hawk and Dove, who debuted in ’68 in Showcase #75, courtesy of plotter/artist Steve Ditko and scripter Steve Skeates. I looked at that first issue last month and realized I’d never really read it, just skimmed it on the stands when it came out. It hadn’t interested me much as a kid; now I find it an interesting failure.

Skeates has said Ditko and Giordano, both older and more conservative he, were convinced Don Hall, pacifist and intellectual couldn’t be anything but a wimp. Whenever Skeates tried to change that, he got outvoted. I can see that attitude in the first issue, starting with the cover.

Hawk is tough. Dove is tamed. Hawk snarls at us. Dove hangs his head in shame. Then we get to the story.While it’s obvious Vietnam is the subject under discussion, there’s no mention of it in the book or on the signs. Did they decide to be more cautious than Friedrich was in that Green Lantern panel? I also notice that although the Hall brothers talk about joining protests, neither brother picks up a sign and participates.

Vietnam was still a hot topic when I arrived in the US in 1969. Hank’s “force is the only thing they understand” is a familiar right-wing argument from the era. Don, on the other hand, doesn’t bring up any of the issues I remember left-wingers raising, such as the relentless bombing of North Vietnam, the body counts, etc. He’s just a softie parroting appeasement cliches — be nice to our enemies, they’ll be nice back. In fairness, their father points out this may be Don’s youth and inexperience talking.Eventually a crook with a score to settle puts Judge Hall in hospital, then sends a hit team to take him out. Hank and Don can’t do anything to stop it until a mysterious voice makes them more powerful, more invincible than ever before. Dove isn’t down with the change, though.At the climax of the story Dove can barely bring himself to fight, even to save his father’s life.

Nor does he fancy continuing as a superhero.

In case you’re wondering what got Don so upset, it’s his father’s shock and outrage that those costumed kids saved his life.

Dude, fighting to stop an attempted murder isn’t vigilante tactics, nor does it violate due process of law. At this point, that’s the only thing Judge Hall has seen them do. The judge is nominally the sensible centrist; he doesn’t sound sensible here. In the first issue of Hawk and Dove he starts channeling Mr. A and making windbag speeches about how if you can’t stand the time, don’t do the crime, which shocks everyone as much as Jack Ryder’s big mouth.

#1 also confirms Don’s attitude from Showcase: his big issue with becoming Dove isn’t sing violence but becoming a “social outcast.” That doesn’t make sense even from the “pacificst=wimp” perspective. I’m guessing the point is that as a liberal, Don’s default setting is supposed to be “sheeple” where his father never flinches when his supposedly shocking statements generate a firestorm of controversy (it’s the kind of thing for which Ross and I used to hand out the Oliver Queen Award).

As Omar Karindu said in the comments to my Creeper piece, Ditko’s work is best when his political opinions aren’t quite so in-your-face.

#SFWApro. Hawk and Dove material by Ditko; other covers top to bottom by Dick Dillin, Kurt Schaffenburger, Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane.