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Imitation without Flattery

Whether driven by a sense of black humor or bona fide dislike for the superheroes of another day, Mark Millar, Frank Quitely, and Trevor Scott together created an image of one of Marvel's oldest super-teams in terms not contrived to elicit admiration.

Imitation as Barb

The occasional appearance of borrowed characters crosses into territory which better deserves the label "parody" than tribute. Such describes items such as Will Eisner's treatment of principal figures from Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" strip in a Spirit story from some six decades ago. But some pieces go much further, into a domains qualifiable as intentionally malicious.

For instance, Marvel's first appearance of the Squadron Supreme, a team based firmly on DC's Justice League, reflected considerable ill-will on the part of Marvel Comics. Given the stodgy nature of DC, particularly on its editorial side, one sees that the insults follow obvious channels. The Squadron Supreme, therefore, first appeared as a malevolent band of Nixon-era reactionaries, so consumed by paranoid anticommunism that they reflexively attacked the Avengers based on the presumption of Stalinist leanings.

So Marvel's version of DC's greatest heroes appeared on the scene spouting a political venom that made Vice President Agnew's most flatulent outpourings of unsolicited opinion sound like base flattery. Never mind however many souls across the aisle at DC wanted the same things most rational beings might; beer, cigars, football, and females doubtless offered more appeal than McCarthyite politics to the talents who depicted Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Aquaman, Green Lantern, and their peers.

The Authority #14 enters this territory with their treatment of the original Lee-Kirby Avengers. In caricature, Giant-Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, and others appear in a tale as the brutal fist of string-pulling powers behind the scenes.

The Scenario

In part two of "The Nativity" storyline, the heroes of The Authority attempt to protect a powerful infant from amoral interests who seek the child's destruction before it can realize its dangerous potentials. To this end, behind-the-scenes players send out a team of relentless and vicious costumed goons to confiscate and destroy the infant.

The bloodshed that follows points out many of the differences between the Code-approved comics of 1963 and today's sex-, violence-, and profanity-bearing pieces. Stan never wrote like this, and Jack might have taken someone who tried to out behind the woodshed for reeducation...unless the likeness became vicious enough to make him laugh as well.

Nihilists, Assassins, and Opportunists

A change in political tides might make the old schisms seem rather naive to a more literate comics audience. The same villains that showed their colors in Herblock cartoons of the fifties do not necessarily evoke much reaction in 2000. Therefore, to truly cast a foul savor over one of Marvel's flagship franchises requires a more modern appraisal of recognized villains.

Thus, these Avengers analogs take the form of completely amoral and apolitical black operatives, what one might see in speculations about violence-prone automata who serve disreputable counterintelligence bodies under agencies like the CIA or KGB.

In such a context, one does not expect the Waid version of the hero to appear. Instead, we have a colorful gang of semiliterate costumed assassins.

Dirty Jokes Bring Louder Laughs

The harshness of the caricature lends considerable humor to this derivative slander, an unfair treatment that, since it targets imaginary people, harms no one. Nonetheless, an undercurrent of naughtiness - the reaction to the uncalled-for harshness of this vision of the Avengers - does much to propel the reader through The Authority #14.

Black humor provides much guilty pleasure in an irreverent culture, and Millar and Quitely here seem in on a joke that carries much of the fundamental blackness characteristic of territory just over the frontiers of satire.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

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