POPE CULTURE

Like so many people of my generation, I've read and loved comic books since I was a small child. Over the last year or two, however, for some reason I've experienced a resurgence in my enthusiasm for weird-ass comics from the vintage of my own childhood and youth (and earlier), including titles I missed back then. Here, for instance, is an odd specimen I had never heard of, but which I turned up recently in the same junkshop stacks in which I found the Classics Illustrated version of Wild Animals I Have Known. This one is the 1982 Marvel Comic The Life of John Paul II.

"THE ENTIRE STORY!" the cover promises, "FROM HIS CHILDHOOD IN POLAND TO THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT!" This was, almost certainly, the only time that the face of JP2 ever shared a cover with the face of Spider-Man. I also love that the Pontiff gets his own little upper-left-hand corner box illustration...

...by which Marvel allowed browsers to flip through the rack and spot their favorites without pulling whole issues out, just like Spidey or Iron Man or She-Hulk or any other superhero. His superpower, I guess, is Infallibility when speaking Ex Cathedra.

Anyway, home with me it went.

This book has no ads or editorial content, no "Marvel Bullpen Bulletins" or "Stan Lee's Soapbox," no full-page strip advertisement in which the Pope uses Hostess Fruit Pies to outwit an enemy. The back cover...

...depicts the Papal Coat of Arms.

The script, by Marvel veteran Steven Grant (later of The Punisher), uses a sort of Citizen Kane structure, with an American reporter waiting for a Papal appearance at Yankee Stadium in 1979 ("Me? I'm a newspaper man--and The Pope is my beat!"), and thinking back over the Pontiff's life as Karol Wojtyla back in Poland. We learn of his love of sports...

...his youth in the theatre, his struggles as a seminarian during the Nazi occupation of Poland...

...his rise to Cardinal, then to Pope...

The comic is at pains to place its admiration for the Pope on a social and secular basis...

...lest anybody suppose that Marvel, of all entities, had gone into the business of Catholic proselytism.

According to the inside back cover, the comic came about when Gene Pelc, a Marvel rep in Tokyo, became friends with a certain Father Julian, a Polish priest serving in Japan. In 1980 Marvel had published a comic book biography of St. Francis (!) called Francis, Brother of the Universe. Father Julian liked it, and thought Marvel should try their hand at a comic-book bio of JP2 as well; Father Mieczyslaw Malinski, who had been a pal of the Pope's when he was still Karol From the Block, was made "Consulting Editor."

Despite the secular disclaimers, though, the result is on the hagiographic side; it's largely a reverent, uncritical account. Which was the tricky part for me, because...I've never been a big fan.

Don't misunderstand: Though I was raised Presbyterian, I come from a heavily Catholic town, went to a Catholic college, had close friends, teachers and mentors who were Catholic, dated and married Catholic women. I've always found the Catholic world seductive, from the dazzling theatricality of its rituals and trappings to the mind-expanding, soul-wounding power of its philosophy, theology and art. The cultural legacy of Catholicism, for beautiful and for horrible, for nightmarish and for glorious, is awe-inspiring to me.

But JP2? For me, always kind of meh.

After John Paul I offered a flicker (possibly illusory) of hope for a more progressive direction for the Church, JP2, while undeniably formidable and charismatic, marked a return to dour, paternalistic, my-way-or-the-highway conservatism. He always seemed to me like part of the Neocon Holy Trinity of the '80s, along with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Even back then I would have regarded him as the least hypocritical, most intellectually complex, and indeed most admirable of that trio, but nonetheless his hardline positions on issues like gay rights, abortion and birth control struck me as harmful, and still do.

But while it didn't completely change this feeling in me, this improbable collaboration between the Vatican and Marvel--and I'm afraid that the values and ideals promulgated by Stan Lee's cornball comic empire of the '80s are closer to my heart than those of the Vatican from the same period--made me take into consideration JP2's staunch insistence on human equality, his ecumenism, his opposition to the death penalty, his capacity for forgiveness, etc. And thus this comic taught me an embarrassing truth about myself: If Marvel Comics thinks you're OK, I'm likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.

LAND OF THE LEE

This is the shirt...

...I happened to be wearing today, when I learned that the great Stan Lee had passed on, at 95. It demonstrates, if any demonstration is needed, the impact that Stanley Leiber has had on our culture; it links an unrelated entity, a baseball team, to some of his iconic creations and co-creations, for no other real reason than that people like them.

I was a devoted reader of Marvel Comics as a kid, especially Spider-Man, The Hulk,  Iron Man and Dr. Strange, but from around my junior high years on I was simply a fan of Lee. His 1974 Origins of Marvel Comics was an endlessly reread tome for me in those days (I still have it on my shelf), and I loved it at least as much for Lee's autobiographical passages, written in his self-consciously jaunty and persistently alliterative style, as for the comic reproductions.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, Stan Lee was a canny pioneer of personal branding, of turning himself into the ringmaster, the impresario at the center of his world. Like Balzac, he created a Comedie humaine, though maybe in Lee's case it should be called a Comedie superhumaine, full of indelible, mythic figures at least a little bit familiar to almost everybody, even people who've never picked up a comic book in their lives. And he made his heroes, and his villains, subject to human foibles and vulnerabilities; for Stan Lee, no matter what your superpower, being human was your Kryptonite.

Even though he did it in print, there can be no question that Stan Lee was one of 20th-Century America's great showmen, and he invariably gave good value. His brash, brightly-colored, wise-assed but good-natured sensibility chased away a lot of the tedious and dreary side of youth and adolescence. And having claimed the pages of his comics as a soapbox, he used it to rail against racism and preach other good values. He had great power, and he used it with great responsibility.

RIP sir, and, of course: Excelsior.

TYPE A PERSONALITIES

Opening this week:

Avengers: Age of Ultron—The big-budget superhero blockbusters of the last decade or so are not, I confess, my favorite genre. I loved Sam Raimi’s first two Spiderman movies and the first two Iron Man flicks as well, and the first Captain America movie, the period piece, had some flavor. But as these and other series have extended and expanded and intermingled with each other, bloat and rote have begun to set in.

Don’t get me wrong; I always find something in all of them to enjoy—there are always exciting scenes and entertaining performances, or, if nothing else, Scarlett Johansson to look at. But for me, there’s a certain hyper-seriousness to the writing of the recent Marvel and DC spectacles, and also a sterile visual atmosphere—a result, I think, of the wall-to-wall CGI—that’s a bit dreary, almost oppressive. Most of them also feel overplotted, and at least a half-hour too long.

So it’s possible that you could find less cranky and whiny commentators than I to hold forth on the matter of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Because, though it gives me no pleasure to take a “you kids get out of my yard” tone, everything I said above applies to this latest Marvel all-star game.

The main hero line-up this time includes Tony Stark aka Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.), Bruce Banner aka The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the aforementioned Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Chris Evans as Captain America, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, among others. The plot this time is yet another variation on the Frankenstein theme: Ultron is an android endowed with massive artificial intelligence, recklessly created by Tony Stark to keep the world peaceful and safe.

Regrettably, Ultron decides the most efficient way to accomplish this is to wipe out the human race with the help of his army of killer robots, and Tony and his Avenger pals have their hands full stopping this. Interminable wild chase and fight scenes ensue, many featuring buildings collapsing into graying clouds of rubble—an unsavory, reflexive modern motif that can’t cease to be obligatory in movies like this soon enough to suit me.

But, as usual, Avengers: Age of Ultron has its compensations. For instance, there’s Elizabeth Olsen, soulful as ever, as Scarlet Witch, some sort of freaky Eastern European super-psychic, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as her super-fast twin brother Quicksilver. And, as aforementioned, there’s Scarlett Johansson to look at.

But the most fun that this movie offered me was its title character, voiced, and performed by “motion capture,” by James Spader. I’ve long been a fan of Spader, from his beginnings in the‘80s as a sort of off-the-bench honorary Brat Packer, through to his hilarious courtroom harangues and pervy lewdnesses on Boston Legal. Avengers: Age of Ultron should have devoted far more of its length to verbal sparring between Spader’s ironic purring and Downey’s nervous, nattering insolence—a clash between two of the greatest smart-alecks in contemporary pop culture.

INTERNATIONAL CLAW

“To die! To be really dead! That must be glorious!”

This was the opinion of Count Dracula, as played by Bela Lugosi, and there have been plenty of other characters who have warned us that immortality—physical immortality, at any rate—is no picnic.

The latest is the title character of The Wolverine, the Marvel mutant superhero, armed with a metal skeleton and retractable metal claws, as well as the ability to quickly regenerate when wounded. Thus Wolverine, aka Logan, has been alive and in fighting trim since the most recent days when his bushy mutton chops wouldn’t make him look ridiculous—the 19th Century, in other words.

The new film is a stand-alone adventure, set in Japan, in which the brooding, world-weary Wolverine, played once again by Hugh Jackman, visits an old acquaintance from his WWII POW days, who offers him a chance at regular physical mortality. The trouble is that however much of a drag immortality may be, it turns out that it comes in really handy when you’re tangling not only with murderous opponents like ninjas and yakuza goons, but also with a venom-spitting snake-woman and a giant metallic suit of samurai armor.

Director James Mangold, working from a script credited to Scott Frank and Mark Bomback, moves the lavish production along, and he makes atmospheric use of the Japanese settings. There’s a funny, ingeniously-worked-out fight on top of a bullet train, for instance, and another memorable sequence where our hero gets riddled with arrows, a bit like Toshiro Mifune at the end of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.

The Wolverine is given a love interest here, the Yakuza’s beautiful daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto). But he seems to have a lot more fun with Mariko’s adoptive sister Yukio (Rila Fukushima), who becomes Logan’s self-appointed sword-wielding bodyguard and sidekick. Fukushima’s odd and oddly appealing face is full of puckish life, and Jackman gives the brooding a rest in his scenes with her. For me, she was easily the best thing about the picture.

Jackman manages the title role with the same lithe, effortless physicality he showed in the earlier films in the series. I must confess, though, that the fascination with this character, an associate of both the X-Men and The Avengers, eludes me. It may be a matter of chronology; he first appeared in the mid-70s, around the time that I stopped reading comics religiously. I wasn’t really aware of him until the X-Men movies started coming out.

But there’s no question that the fascination is real: Wolverine has gradually become one of the most beloved of superheroes of all time. A few years ago a friend of mine, then in his twenties, truly tried to get his wife to let him name their son Wolverine. He finally got her to settle for “Logan.” I’m not kidding.

I enjoyed The Wolverine well enough, but if you’re of this guy’s mindset, I’d say it’s a must-see. Then again, if you’re of this guy’s mindset, you’ll probably see it no matter what I say.

3 IRON

Once again, Robert Downey, Jr. triumphs in the role of the armored Marvel superhero Iron Man and his alter-ego Tony Stark.

In Iron Man 3, as always, he has the light touch of a comedian and the soulfulness and charisma and glamour of a movie star. His jumpy, fast-talking insolence doesn’t come across as narcissism, because it’s mixed with an uncommon sense of empathy—he seems connected to the other people onscreen, even the villains with whom he’s grappling.

Thus, even when he’s playing a self-absorbed egomaniac like Tony Stark, he, Downey, doesn’t come across as a self-absorbed egomaniac. Or rather, he does come across as a self-absorbed egomaniac, but a lovable one.

Iron Man 3 (or Iron Man Three, as the credits spell it) begins with a sequence set in Bern, Switzerland on the last day of 1999, in which a younger, more obnoxious Tony, by way of snubbing a stranger, unwittingly sets in motion the troubles which will follow. Thirteen years later, a sinister figure calling himself The Mandarin, played with spooky panache by Ben Kingsley, claims responsibility for a series of mysterious explosions.

Eventually Iron Man, now suffering from PTSD after his experiences in The Avengers, runs afoul of a circle of fanatics claiming allegiance to The Mandarin. They’ve been treated with an agent called “Extremis,” allowing them to regenerate when injured, and to turn red-hot from within. This gang kidnaps Tony’s sweetie Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), as well as The President of the United States (William Sadler).

The boots-on-the-ground leader of these hotties is played, rather well, by Guy Pearce. Tony and his pal Rhodey (Don Cheadle), aka Iron Patriot, must ride to the rescue. There are twists and turns—Tony befriends a little kid, for instance—and absurdly magical sequences, like Iron Man’s rescue of multiple people falling out of a ripped-open jet plane. The director here is Shane Black, replacing Jon Favreau of Iron Man and Iron Man 2 (though Favreau plays a sizable acting role here), and while the movie is probably about a half-hour too long—like almost all action blockbusters seem to be any more—it’s polished and mostly engrossing.

But there’s no way around it, or at least there wasn’t for me—recent events intrude into one’s enjoyment of Iron Man 3 as a simple action entertainment. The explosions, the amputees turned into “Extremis” henchpersons, even the Iron Man suits themselves—here often used empty, by remote control, like drone aircraft—all give the movie an ugly, unsavory real-world resonance it wouldn’t have had a few months ago, rightly or wrongly, and a tragic atmosphere it doesn’t really deserve. This doesn’t ruin the picture, but it does leave you more poignantly aware than usual of the genre’s limitations.

No doubt superhero stories have their legitimate place in the human tradition, just as the stories of Hercules or Beowulf did in their time. The fantasies they service, both of being protected and of being a protector, are perfectly human, even noble.

They’re also vain, taken literally. Even if Tony Stark’s technology existed, and even if —far less likely—it was in the hands of somebody as well-intentioned as Tony, it couldn’t protect us from evil. Superhero stories have become far more complex in last half-century, yet in the end, they tend to return reflexively to the touching idea that evil can be vanquished in a fistfight. But evil is the part of human badness that can’t be socked in the jaw. Iron Man 3 reminds us, probably without meaning too, that the superhero archetype is, in the end, an empty suit.