| Posted: 19 July 2012 at 9:58pm | IP Logged | 1
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Spoiler warning! (The endings of Gladiator by Phillip Wylie, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, and Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson are discussed below.) A thread about the incorporation of established literary heroes into the continuities of Marvel and DC sounds like a big enough topic for a separate thread to me. There is a lot of ground to cover with this one! There are characters like Sauron and Gladiator whose names either consciously or not allude to literary predecessors. Richard Rider's brother built a Sherlock Holmes robot to follow him around in that comic. I don't know if Holmes exists "for real" in the Marvel Universe (although he did appear in a couple of black and white Marvel magazines.) Holmes definitely exists within the DC canon however having teamed up with Batman and a host of other detectives in an anniversary issue of Detective Comics. The question of literary characters becomes much more widespread if one includes Mythological characters. Clearly, the Greek, Roman, and Norse pantheons all "really" exist in the Marvel and DC universes and their influence upon characters and continuity is vast. One problem I have with the concept of including the actual characters from the larger world of fiction into the proceedings, rather than simply borrowing their names, is the way in which the original endings of the books from which they spring "must" be changed to allow for their stories to continue. This is certainly true of the Invisible Man in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (to allow for an even more gruesome death later in the book...), Phillip Wylie's "Gladiator," and W.H. Hudson's Rima. In all of the above examples, one could argue that the character's ends are, at least in part, what the book is actually about. "Fixing" their deaths at the end in large part undercuts their literary importance and impact, leaving the comic book versions diluted and unconvincing as characters. This is especially true for me in reading Roy Thomas' handling of Gladiator in Young All-Stars. Gahhh... Awful and lame beyond description... A terrible thing to do to a character one supposedly admires. (Thomas turns some odd cartwheels and handsprings to incorporate members of the Justice League into starring roles in German Expressionist Cinema in a few Elseworlds novels, as well as some H.G. Wells novels. This, I think, represents yet another level of literary involvement in the world of comics, the sideways-seeming "adaptation" of an existing work to fit comic book sensibilities. This trick hasn't really worked for me yet. Then there are the times when characters consciously set out to re-enact the events and setting of a piece of classic literature or film, such as the many times the heroes play the roles in Dickens' "Christmas Carol," Baum's "Wizard of Oz," or Dante's "Inferno." It can be fun, yes, but effective...? I dunno... I do know a good deal more about Dante's Hell than I have any right to, given that I've only skimmed translations in a very cursory manner...) I like a good literary cameo, such as the pulp characters who move comfortably about in the Rocketeer cosmos, or Doc Savage teaming up for an issue or two with the Thing. I worry, however, when the "implication game" kicks in and we then must deal with Doc now existing in a world where everyone from the Celestials to Rocket Raccoon becomes a potential guest-star. A little literary guest-starring goes a long way. DC's Firstwave, in which Batman, Doc Savage, Rima, and Will Eisner's Spirit all live in the same world, because, well... None of them have super powers, so, um, they're like... completely alike... would be an example of taking these sorts of things too far. Sometimes the guest-starring appearance works for me, (I weirdly love that Rima, from 1904's Green Mansions, appeared on Super Friends) but often it does not. The liberties taken to implant these characters into worlds with Skrulls, Infinity Gems, and Bottle Cities all too often simply do not translate.
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