Gene Phillips's Blog, page 90

THE FANTASTIC FILES: FANTASTIC FOUR #4 (1962)

                   “The Coming of the Sub-Mariner”
 
FANTASTIC FOUR #4 concerns more than just the advent of a new foe for the super-team. In essence this story, dated May 1962, ushers in what will later be known as the “Marvel Universe.” 


 
 
Prior to this story, there had rarely been an attempt to promote what later generations of comics-fans would call “continuity,” which connotes the...

THE FANTASTIC FILES: FANTASTIC FOUR #3 (1962)

 
 
                     “The Menace of the Miracle Man”
 
The FF’s first opponent, the Mole Man, had the symbolic qualities of a deity dwelling beneath the earth and summoning forth its powers.  The group’s third opponent bears a strong resemblance to a specific myth-figure who also typically dwells beneath the earth.  However, this Satanic-looking villain, the Miracle Man...

THE FANTASTIC FILES: FANTASTIC FOUR #2 (1962)

 

 
“The Fantastic Four Meet the Skrulls from Outer Space”
 
 
In all times the best aspect of commercial comic books is their wild, “get-it-out-there” creativity.  Being “wild,” of course, is the antithesis of predictability and even stable rationality.   In the premiere issue of THE FANTASTIC FOUR, Lee and Kirby produced a phantasmagoria of mythic images, whose complexity was rare for the time.  In this respect issue #2 is something of a letdown, but it’s...

THE FANTASTIC FILES: FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (1961), PART TWO

During the flight, we finally get the real motive for Reed’s wish to undertake the forbidden flight.   In the first panel of the story’s tenth page, a voice from within the rocket—not attributed, but probably Reed’s—asserts, “We had to do it!  We had to be first!”   This is the true motive for Reed’s desire to make the flight as soon as possible: the desire to win the race against all comers, to have the glory of being “first.”  Such Promethean endeavors have bee...

THE FANTASTIC FILES: FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (1961), PART ONE

 
“The Fantastic Four Meet the Mole Man” 
 
The sage of the “World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” begins in an atmosphere of commingled wonder and terror.   Although “the Fantastic Four” was the seminal creation of editor/writer Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, the feature’s reputation for greatness inheres in the creators’ ability to impart this rare combination of wonder and terror, which they dominantly derived from from the “creature-features” of 1950s cin...

THE "FANTASTIC FILES" PROJECT

The project to which I alluded in my previous post has nothing to do with the theme of "otherworldly fantasy" that was the original basis of this blog.  However, it is about what I term "comic book myths"-- that is, the types of mythic discourse that arise from the popular fiction in comic books.  Therefore, this project is similar in form to my mediations regarding prose science fiction and fantasy.

THE FANTASTIC FILES is a project I conceived years ago, and which has almo...

RE-RE-ORIENTATION

After reading this essay on Jade Varden's blog, I realize that I haven't done much to make this blog attractive to browsers.

I've talked about blogging some of my fiction, and I never seem to get round to it, possibly because it's old news to me.  And I'm not yet prepared to take the self-publishing link.  I wanted to do pieces that critiqued the length and breadth of the fantasy-genre, but I'm still strongly involved with three other blogs, and I should probably admit that at this t...

TELEFANTASIES

In this short essay I wrote:

...this-worldly" fantasies are just as much part of the genre as the "otherworldly" type

I haven't written much about  "this-world" fantasies, which means the type of fantasies where some strange element-- usually something explained by "magic," apart from occasional exceptions to the rule-- invades an everyday contemporary setting.  But it occurred to me recently that live-action television has remained a particularly good source for the "this-worldly" ty...

RTO #3: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1898)

I'd reread Wells' classic  WAR OF THE WORLDS within the last 3-4 years, and I remain impressed with its dark vision of Earth being "colonized" by superior powers, much in the way primitive Earth-tribes were victimized by advanced weapons.

I gave the novel a quick glance-through this week with one idea in mind: how much does Wells focus on the sheer spectacle of the Martian invasion, in contradistinction to the two famous film adaptations from 1953 and 2005 respectively.

The answer is prett...

RTO #2: THE ILLEARTH WAR

I had read the first six books in the CHRONICLES OF THOMAS COVENANT some time ago, and recently considered trying to work through the last four books in the series.  To refamiliarize myself with the series, I reread the first two books in the series, LORD FOUL'S BANE and THE ILLEARTH WAR, but then got distracted by other reading-demands and tabled that idea.

What still impresses me about Donaldson's epic-- spoilers ahead for anyone who doesn't want to see endings discussed-...