Other Times, Other Places

In the Phillipines in 1950, a young girl named Narda swallowed a stone and transformed into DARNA, superhuman warrior woman from the planet Marte. Since then, she and supporting heroes Captain Barbell, Lastikman, Dyesebel the mermaid and more have battled villains like Valentina, Lucifera, Mambabarang king of insects and assorted vampires, zombies and aliens in movies, tv and comic books. Even today she is as beloved an icon as Wonder Woman or Buffy.

Since the 1940s, Mexico's greatest luchadore was EL SANTO, "The Man in the Silver Mask." Along with his wrestling career, Santo was a superheroic champion of justice in comics, and in movies like Santo Vs the King of Crime, Santo Vs the Vampire Women, Santo Vs the Martian Invasion and many more. He was an idol of children and the common man alike, the first and maybe only superhero in fiction and in real life.

In 1971, Takeshi Hongo was kidnapped by a terrorist organization called Dai Shocker, that turned their victims into mutant-cyborg warriors for evil. Hongo escaped and used the powers Dai Shocker had given him as the motorcycle-riding, grasshopper-helmed hero KAMEN RIDER ("Masked Rider"). He was the first in a long line of Kamen Riders in successive live-action tv series, manga and toys. In 2009 ten incarnations of Riders from alternate realities (and previous tv series) teamed up to save the universe.

From the 1930s through the early 50s, DOC SAVAGE - the Man of Bronze - was the hero of the average man. For 10 cents an issue his monthly pulp magazine adventures took readers on globe-hopping adventures to exotic places like the Phantom City, the Valley of the Vanished and the Land of Always Night in pursuit of supercriminal masterminds along with Doc's five aides, whose amiable roughneck nature belied their genius in chemistry, law, engineering, archaeology and electricity. Doc himself, raised as a perfect mental and physical specimen, was a genius in everything. He was always three steps ahead of his enemies. Doc's cousin, Patricia, was an early example of a heroine who could hold her own in the company of their rowdy crew.

In 1929, a Belgian cartoonist known as Herge created a young reporter named TINTIN. His adventures appeared in serial form in Belgian comics magazines like PILOTE. and when the serials ended they were collected in graphic albums. Not only are these still in print, but they are sold in many languages worldwide including English. Tintin's adventures with his dog Snowy and companions like Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and the detective twins Thompson and Thompson (most names altered for English) are a mix of humor, mystery, suspense, political commentary and even science fiction. Though he is little known in America, Tintin is one of the most beloved characters in comics around the world. Steven Speilberg is a fan and is producing a major motion picture version.

Adventure or continuity strips are all but dead in America, but there was a time when people followed them avidly. The characters were part of our lives. The marraige of Dick Tracy and Tess Truehart, the death of Raven Sherman in Milton Caniff's TERRY AND THE PIRATES (which brought in sympathy cards for years after), the birth of Sparkle Plenty in DICK TRACY were like society events for the middle class - and not just the middle class. When Little Orphan Annie's faithful dog, Sandy, was run over, her creator Harold Grey received cards and letters begging him to let Sandy live, including a telegram from Henry Ford. During a newspaper strike in 1945, New York mayor Fiorello Laguardia read the comics on radio so people could keep up. Most of the artists reflected the holidays in their continuity, either in-story or with special strips with the characters wishing everybody happy holidays and making them feel even more like part of our lives. I'm currently reading hardcover collections of ANNIE, and despite the crude-by-today's-standards art it is a masterpiece evoking the spirit of the Great Depression era. Grey's philosophy is an intergral part of the strip. Annie, "Daddy" Warbucks and more display an honesty, ethics and common sense that helps me understand the conservative mindset.

In the days before tv, radio was filled with adventure series. People followed THE SHADOW, CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT, THE LONE RANGER, CHANDU THE MAGICIAN and radio versions of characters like TARZAN, ORPHAN ANNIE and BUCK ROGERS faithfully. CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT and others were interactive shows. Kids could join Captain Midnight's Secret Squadron and receive a Code-O-Graph to decode messages that were vital to the plot, and hope to be called on when the Captain needed help.

In 1961, PERRY RHODAN, commanding the first lunar expedition, discovered a crashed spaceship from the mostly degenerated Arkonide empire. With his crew and Arkonides Crest and Thora, he united the warring nations of Earth and went on to found the Solar Empire. His adventures in time and space have been published weekly in Germany by a team of writers ever since, and are currently at issue #2553. The superintelligence ES made him immortal early on - Perry and his companions are currently living in the year 5050AD by our reckoning (although they have gone through several different calendars by now). They have met with the highest known powers in the universe, the Cosmocrats and the Chaotarchs. The series predated a lot of concepts made popular later: Rhodan's Mutant Corps appeared two years before X-MEN, and the Posbis (for positronic-biological) were forerunners of STAR TREK's Borg, including the cube-shaped ships. There are spinoff series like ATLAN (the immortal Arkonide who founded the colony of Atlantis 10,000 years ago), models ships, collectible card games and video games.

I like reading the old books and the international ones, watching the films and listening to the radio shows. Like Charles Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, they evoke the spirit of other times and other places. Not just the descriptions and customs, but what people thought and felt. Somehow it lets me connect with the people of those times and places, and understand that they were not so different.

Living the Myth

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." ~ Muriel Rukeyse

"Facts don’t persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings." ~ Tom Asacker

"Life itself is the most wonderful fairytale of all." ~ Hans Christian Andersen


Once as a weather forecaster in the Air Force I was asked for a weather briefing for a flight to Spokane WA. The pilot was a very distinguished looking Colonel. When I entered his destination as SKA (the 3-digit airport code for Spokane) he remarked, "Did you know that Ska means vulture in Tarzan's ape language?" I had to reply, "Sir, you are probably talking to one of the few people on this base who knows that."

Taking hotel reservations by phone, I once had an older caller who griped and complained about everything: location, the room type, price etc. When I offered his confirmation number it was a long string of numbers and letters, and he grumped about that too. For some reason I commented, "Yeah, it looks like a Captain Midnight decoder message."(1) At this he mellowed out completely and said in a wistful voice, "Ah, the Captain is dead now, but it's good to know someone remembers him."

The heroes and monsters we create in our modern myths reach deep into our minds and affect lives in a real way. I've heard from dozens of people whose morals were shaped more by Superman, Spider-man, Doc Savage, Sam Spade and the like than by any number of Sunday sermons.

The most obvious example is the Star Trek subculture, and not just the fan groups or the Las Vegas attraction. There is the story of the sick child whose remission was helped by believing that a pet "tribble" depended on the child's life energy to survive. The naming of the first space shuttle ENTERPRISE(2), cellphones designed after Trek's Communicators, and the many NASA scientists and technicians whose careers were inspired by the series are a few examples. Even Stephen Hawking, the genius quantum physicist who said "My goal is simple. It is the complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all," and the only person to play himself on STAR TREK was a fan.(3) STAR TREK also made an impact on society with television's first interracial kiss between Captain Kirk and Lt Uhura in the 60s episode "Plato's Stepchildren." We take it for granted today, but it was pioneering so few decades ago. (4)

Popeye has something in common with Captains Kirk and Picard: they are all modern takes on the myths of Odysseus and Jason. Popeye in his original comic strip form was a sailor to far lands and strange encounters with creatures like the Jeep and the Goons(5). And if Tarzan was zen, Popeye had to be a profoundly enlightened being with "I yam what I yam, an' that's all what I yam." But he has inspired people in other ways. An internet acquaintance of mine has a disability called Hypokalemic Periodic Paralysis.

"I eat cans of spinach. The Potassium in the Spinach makes me visibly and actively stronger, because my disability is affected by my Potassium levels.
"(The condition is) caused by Ion Channel DNA mutations... Ion Channels are what determine if you can control your muscle status. When they malfunction, your muscles may become ridgid, flacid, or switch between the two states rapidly uncontrollably.
"I wish I could ask the creator of Popeye if he experienced symptoms like my disability and found that Spinach made him feel better... (6)
"Me: Sitting in a chair unable to stand and barely able to move my hands, eat Spinach, bounce out of chair and go play Ping Pong really well for a few minutes, and then go back to being weak until I have something else with Potassium.
"Anyways, I swear I saw Popeye cartoons like this just with him not being so weak.
Overall Popeye inspired me to eat my Spinach and that is what good Heroes do!"

Gloria Steinem, the founder of modern feminism, read comic books as a child but was dismayed at thje superheroes who solved everything with violence. She wrote:
"I am happy to say that I was rescued from this plight at about the age of seven or eight, rescued (Great Hera!) by a woman ... she was beautiful, brave, and explictly out to change 'a world torn by the hatreds and wars of men.' She was Wonder Woman.
"Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values ... that feminists are now trying to introduce: strength and self-reliance for women, sisterhood and mutual support among women, peacefulness and esteem for human life."

A lot of young women have found a role model in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In a recent interview on NPR, 17 year old Brittany LaBrake said, "I just really loved to watch it 'cause of her story and how she's such a strong person, she's like 15 years old and had to be a Slayer, had to give up her social life so she could fight vampires and save the world ... She had a lot on her plate at a young age and I feel like that's basically my story too." She wasn't talking about slaying monsters, but dealing with three siblings and irresponsible parents. "I just feel like her story is kinda like my story."

In the British census of 2001, 390,000 people across England and Wales listed their religion as "Jedi." Yes, it was an organized campaign and some people did it just to annoy the government, and it didn't have the intended effect of making Jedi an official religion, but it reveals the hold that our modern myths, and their nondogmatic spiritual ideas, can have.

Us geeks who love comics and movies and science fiction and fantasy may have the basis for a secular spirituality that may be better for us than all the churches in the world. After all, we have one major advantage over organized religions: We know our myths aren't real.



(1) Captain Midnight was a 1930s-40s radio hero who sent kids who listened a Secret Squadron decoder ring for Ovaltine labels; then broadcast messages in code with clues to his next episode.
(2) Which backfired on the fans who wrote NASA to name it. The ENTERPRISE was a prototype that never went to into space.
(3) On a tour of the set, when Hawking passed the warp drive engines, he commented, "I'm working on that."
(4) The series has been less successful at introducing gay characters. Although creator Gene Roddenberry wanted to, the networks refused. They used allusions and parables involving asexual, tri-sexual, and gender-bending aliens, but never got to just dropping gay crewmembers into the cast, like Rickie on MY SO-CALLED LIFE, and accepting them without making an issue of it.
(5) And in fact introduced those words into the English language. The original jeep was a GP (general purpose) vehicle that could go anywhere, so that soldiers nicknamed it jeep after Eugene the Jeep in Popeye, who could teleport and walk through walls, and go anywhere. Alice the Goon and her people were big, burly and scary-looking.
(6) Which is possible. EC Segar had an undiagnosed long time illness and died of liver disease. PP was not well known then, and diagnosis overlap is known with a condition that can affect the liver.