LIFE AND TIMES OF SAVIOR 28 #2: Take that, Christopher Nolan!

[starwolf_oakley]

Dennis McNulty is not a stand-in for Jack Kirby. Reading S28 from that perspective will only mislead you.
- Mike Cavallaro





Mike Cavallaro himself said the following on one of the older boards in 2009:

I've been asked in interviews about a lot of the design work on S28, including the character design for Dennis McNulty. Here's how it went ...

J.M.'s script notes frequently mention actors of various periods when trying to communicate the general look of a character. The notes regarding Dennis basically said, "Think elderly James Cagney / Leo Gorcey." And that's what I did.

A studio mate of mine walked by my desk one of the first times I was drawing McNulty and said, "Hey, is that supposed to be Jack Kirby???"

It hadn't occurred to me before that, but once pointed out I could see the resemblance.

I couldn't help thinking of all the old photos I'd seen of Jack. There's a few where he's wearing a smart looking suit with a wide brimmed fedora, and his resemblance to people like Cagney is noticeable. I would speculate that figures like Cagney must have been a sort of role model for guys of Jack's generation. Again, I'm speculating.

So yes, Dennis does kinda look like Jack Kirby. But he also kinda looks like James Cagney with maybe a little Leo Gorcey, which is what I was really shooting for.

No attempt was made by either J.M. nor myself to draw any connection between Jack Kirby's beliefs and those of the character, Dennis McNulty.

I'm a huge fan of Silver and Golden Age comics and those that created them. I probably read as many interviews with cartoonists of those generation as I do comics themselves. I really love what those guys accomplished, the way those comics used to look, etc. etc.

Obviously, Jack Kirby is one of my artistic heroes. I love almost everything he drew. I don't really know what his personal beliefs were regarding hippies, politics, etc. etc. I'm sure it will make interesting reading at some point, and I'm also sure that regardless of how near of far his views fall in proximity to my own, it will do nothing to diminish my respect for him.

Hope that clarifies things.
Dennis McNulty is not a stand-in for Jack Kirby. Reading S28 from that perspective will only mislead you.


Dennis explains for a bit that the Master Stone made Savior 28 stronger and stronger over the years, the point the "eggheads" thought he would live forever. So then how...



Flashback time! Or a Take That to BATMAN BEGINS. I'm not sure.



"You cannot lead these men unless you are prepared to do what is necessary to defeat evil."



"Your compassion is a weakness your enemies will not share."
"That's why it's so important. It separates us from them."






We get a look that James Smith went to Europe in his civilian identity, helped liberate Buchewald, and went catatonic as a result. He was in a mental institution for a few years while Dennis was the substitute Saviro 28 for a while.

Nearly shattered and suicidal after 9/11, Savior 28 finds an important quote.

"What which is most needed is a loving heart."




"Not any more." 28 flies away. The good guys and bad guys pause, then go back to fighting.



"...That I would say yes."

This exact scene and what Maybe Dick Cheney is talking about was not revealed in the series. This was supposed to be revealed, but the order was cut from six issues to five. J.M. DeMatteis said he hopes to go back to it some day.

Comments

[richardak]

I have something to say to DeMatteis and every other comic-book writer who dreams up something like this. You can tell any kind of story you want to in a comic book. You don't have to tell superhero stories if you don't want to, if you hate them so much. Personally, I don't read many superhero comics anymore, but that's just my taste. I don't hate them or anything. But if you hate them so much, write something different. Don't spend your careers writing mainstream superhero stories, and then maybe you won't get so bitter that you won't feel the need to write stuff like this or Hero Squared (I think it's pretty telling that DeMatteis has gone to this well more than once) about how horrible superheroes are and how they cause more harm than they prevent because they have a cartoonishly simple, black-and-white view of how the world works.

Because, honestly, we don't need anymore comics like this. The truth is that comic books like the one this is caricaturing are the exception these days, not the rule, and have been for a long time. The horse is dead. You killed it a long time ago. Stop beating it.

[laughing_tree]

"Because, honestly, we don't need anymore comics like this. The truth is that comic books like the one this is caricaturing are the exception these days, not the rule, and have been for a long time. The horse is dead. You killed it a long time ago. Stop beating it."

Not really? I mean, this comic is basically arguing for non-violence and pacifism. If anything, comics are now much further away from that than in the good ol' days when they tended to be more bloodless and you could go an entire issue with Superman not actually punching the bad guys.

[richardak]

In that sense, yes, but in the sense of comics having a simplistic, black-and-white moral view, no.

[laughing_tree]

That difference is a pretty huge one, though. I mean, the whole pacifism angle seems to be what this story is mainly about.

The typical deconstructive work is primarily cynical, with a view that superheroes are too sanitized. "In the real world, you're gonna have to get your hands bloody!" and all that. This is the polar opposite of that, about how superhero stories are not idealistic enough because they posit that violence is an acceptable and necessary solution. It doesn't bring them down to our level but challenges them to reach an even higher one.

As I see it, the whole point of superheroes is to be aspirational. I'd argue that a story challenging us to be better, rather than being hatred towards the genre, is being true to the genre's spirit. Far more true to it, in fact, than some Batman issue where the art lovingly renders him hitting someone with a big KRAKK sound effect. We could use far more of the former than the latter, frankly.

[richardak]

I don't agree with that. The arguments that superheroes are bad for settling their problems with force being made in this comic are the same as the ones in Hero Squared. As I said, this is not the first time that DeMatteis has gone to this well.

Are there particular examples you have in mind of deconstructive works saying that heroes need to get their hands dirty?

[laughing_tree]

I've never read Hero Squared but if it also advocated non-violence, then that's still only two books vs. pretty much every other superhero comic out there. Far from criticizing something that no longer exists, it seems to be criticizing something (stories where heroes use violence to settle problems) that overwhelmingly exists.

"Are there particular examples you have in mind of deconstructive works saying that heroes need to get their hands dirty?"

Not necessarily 'need' in the sense of 'ought to' (though those certainly exist, Dark Knight Returns being the most obvious example) but in the sense of 'inevitably will.' Most deconstructive cape stories are at least partially about how, when things get all re-a-lis-tic, moral compromise will out. Watchmen, Ex Machina, Miracleman.

[richardak]

You and I probably disagree about how to interpret Watchmen. I don't think that the message is about how heroes will inevitably get their hands dirty, because I don't think that that's what happens in that story. The heroes just fail. The villain wins.

As for Ex Machina, it's not particularly pacifistic, but I think it's less about how heroes have to get their hands dirty than about how, again, the real world is too complicated and messy for superheroics.

I haven't read Miracleman, so I can't comment on that.

The reason that not many comics advocate pacifism is for the same reason not many people in general advocate pacifism. Most so-called pacifists have no qualms about calling the police if an intruder breaks into their house in the middle of the night. True pacifism means being willing to let the bad guys win. As I said, DeMatteis keeps going to this well. He clearly has a problem with the idea that the way to stop the bad guys is to punch them. What he doesn't have, as he has the main character in Savior 28 admit, is an alternative.

[laughing_tree]

As I see it, in Watchmen the heroes get their hands dirty *and* also fail.

I agree with your take on Ex Machina, and I think part of how they show that real world messiness is by showing that the guy who tries to be a superhero ends up a corrupt politician. Dirty hands.

In a superhero comic, as opposed to real life, the only reason non-violent solutions won't work is because the writer chooses for that to be the case. But it's they're deck; they have the power to stack it in another way if they desire. They can create stories where there always is a non-violent solution, just like for decades superhero writers created stories where there was always a non-*lethal* solution. It's unrealistic that Spider-Man never has to kill in self-defense or as a last resort, but we accept it because we're not looking for escapism: A better world where there is always Another Way. Extending that so that the superheroes always find not just a non-lethal but non-violent solution is little different.

[richardak]

I'd like to ask you to clarify what you mean a little bit. When you say that the only reason it does not work in the story as opposed to real life is that the writer has made that choice, do you mean only that the writer could choose to write a story in which the supervillain is stopped without the use of force, however unrealistic that might be, or do you mean that it would not be unrealistic?

Because I think the first one is true, in that everything that happens in a fictional story happens that way because the writer chooses for it to happen that way. The problem is that the writer makes that choice when he decides to tell a story about a supervillain. That's why DeMatteis has never been able to figure out an alternative, despite trying more than once. All stories are about a protagonist with a goal and obstacles in the way of that goal. Once you are telling a story about a supervillain, you have introduced an obstacle that cannot be overcome except by force.

That's why I say that if DeMatteis wants to write stories where problems are solved without violence, he should write a different kind of story in the first place. There's room in comics for a title about a police negotiator who persuades hostage-takers to give themselves up without hurting anyone. Although, again, that doesn't work if the hostage-taker is Hans Gruber (who was basically a supervillain).

I would just add one last thing. The reason we accept the genre convention that the hero will not kill the villain no matter what, and the reason that that convention exists in the first place, is that it is really hard to come up with good villains. In a movie or even a television series that might last for multiple seasons, you don't need to be able to keep bringing back the same villains over and over. In an ongoing comic book, you do need to be able to do that, and it's a lot easier to do it if the villains aren't dead. Of course, that's the same reason that we accept villains (and heroes) coming back from the dead in comics. We all know that it's totally unrealistic, but it serves a useful purpose.

[sadoeuphemist]

Once you are telling a story about a supervillain, you have introduced an obstacle that cannot be overcome except by force.

I don't think this is true. There are so many supervillains who are amenable to negotiation. Like, Magneto is working with the X-Men now, so is Sabertooth, Venom's a good guy, Dr. Doom's a good guy, Loki's morally ambiguous, Squirrel Girl talked down Kraven the Hunter and Mole Man. There's Flash's blue collar crook rogues gallery, Batman's working with Arkham inmates in his title, Lex Luthor is a scumbag but the whole point of his business magnate persona is that he's a villain Superman can't just punch and be done with, part of Wonder Woman's gimmick used to be Reformation Island, etc, etc.

I actually think the majority of long-running supervillains have gotten so much characterization of their own that you can plausibly write them teaming up with superheroes for one reason or another. I think the truly irredeemable supervillains who can only be defeated by force are now in the minority.

[jlbarnett]

how true to these characters are these alterations?

[sadoeuphemist]

What does that even mean?

I do think that yes, when you have to tell decades after decades of stories using the same group of characters fighting each other, it's only natural that you end up with a bunch of stories where they team up together instead.

[richardak]

Fair point, but while it's true that various villains have gone through good or ambiguous phases (just as many heroes have gone through evil phases), they tend to get replaced in the villain role in the story with other villains. This is hardly the first time that Magneto has worked with the X-men, after all, but, a) I confidently predict that he, and all of the erstwhile villains you name, will return to villainy sooner or later, b) that in the meantime other villains will get beaten up by the heroes.

[laughing_tree]

I mean that writers can choose to create stories where the villains can be defeated without violence. I don't agree that supervillains necessitate violent solutions. Other ways of defeating superheroes include: Negotiation, negating the impetus for their villain plot, stealing their power source, trickery, etc. Joe Casey wrote an entire year of Superman comics where he was a pacifist and never threw a single punch.

I'm also pointing out that, while it's unrealistic that the villains can *always* be defeated without violence, it's no more unrealistic than a number of the genre's other conceits.

Also, while you're right that the need to keep villains around is one of the reasons heroes don't kill, that's not the whole story. Writers don't have Spider-Man kill no-name henchmen either, even though that's quite common in other action genres.

[tcampbell1000]

For what it's worth, I don't think DeMatteis hates superheroes, 'cause if he does he's really really good at hiding it. This IS the same writer who did "Kraven's Last Hunt," JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL (with Keith Giffen), CAPTAIN AMERICA #300, and the recent animated adaptation of "Teen Titans: The Judas Contract." He's just trying to slay a sacred cow here, and that's fine in principle. Doing so can often lead to a good story.

But I feel like a lot of comics writers have been slow to grow past the Eighties. All of us have some degree of WATCHMEN envy, and because of that we often fail to acknowledge that the sacred cow of superhero morality has been slain and slain and slain again and again, and every story like this acts like it's one of the first to come up with the concept.

In small doses, JMDM's ideas about the futility of violent superhero theatrics can work well. Kraven breaks the rules of those theatrics and then transcends them; the Leaguers and their enemies are ridiculous because they're all just trying to live normal lives and make a little extra scratch when they're not caught up in Kirbytastic action.

There's a JLI villain who rants, "Personally, I think all you superheroes are mentally unstable! I mean, anyone who thinks they can somehow change the world by putting on a costume and beating people up--" But this sermon only lasts a panel or two before we go back to slapstick action.

In SAVIOR 28, there's almost nothing fun to interrupt the sermonizing. And J.M.'s tic of using one of his characters as a mouthpiece while the others point out how mouthpiecey he is ("Enough already, Captain Marvel! Stop talking like some old comic book!") gets to be a recognizable crutch after a while.

I'm not holding my breath for the sixth issue. World politics have changed to the point that worrying about Cheney almost feels quaint.

[laughing_tree]

The thing is, in a lot of such stories, the "superhero morality" being deconstructed is at least partly a stand-in for real world morality. When the writer is expressing frustration over black-and-white thinking, it comes from a place of frustration over such thinking in the real world and the ugly places it has led and continues to lead societies and government. When they vent about fighting mad scientists instead of the "real problems," it's just as much about how, in our world, systemic problems that foster crime and violence are not sufficiently addressed.

So in that sense, even decades after WATCHMEN, writers treat this sacred cow as alive because in the real world it is alive. Until those problems go away from the real world, there will continue to be writers frustrated at them and who want to channel that into their stories.

[richardak]

Authors are responding to what's going on in the real world all the time, but it's a facile criticism to say that someone you don't agree with is engaging in black-and-white thinking. To someone who doesn't agree with a decision, that decision will always seem too simplistic.

I might point out, for example, that it is overly simplistic and too black-and-white to think that policymakers respond over-simplistically to policy problems because their understanding of those problems is overly simplistic. Rather, the problem is that policy tools are, by their nature, crude and over-broad. When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail, but often all you have is a hammer.

[richardak]

See, that's exactly my point. DeMatteis has gone to this well many times, including very often on his and Giffen's run on the Justice League. There it was funny, which made it go down a lot more easily. Here it's not funny at all. It's clearly been an issue he has had with the genre he has chosen to work in. But you're absolutely right that this cow--I called it a horse, but same idea--has been slain over and over again.

[thehood]

Not really. Since this is suggesting pacifism, unlike other deconstructions.

Also, he quite obviously doesn't hate Super Heroes.

[richardak]

If a superhero is going to become a pacifist, it would help a lot if he figured out how to stop the bad guys without using force, in a way that would be believable and which could be applied consistently. Because jlbarnett has an important point: this is a world in which superpowered madmen who want to take over the world are real.

[jlbarnett]

the problem is that in the realities we're looking at here the spandex and the cosmic rays evil does exist. In comics there are aliens that want to enslave everyone, meglomaniacs that want to rule the world etc. All thst stuff is real in the comics

[richardak]

Exactly. Thank you.