CORRESPONDENCE
it was wartime and they were out
trying to inspire patriotism. And
even if there were no spies then,
which of course there were, they
were stimulating the kids to send
in their dimes.
Comics are "decent junk"!
Camp nostalgia and pop art blow–
ups are a far cry from the good
old authentic "golden age of co–
mics."
If
you don't think so, send
a post card to Bill Spicer, 418-H
Stocker, Glendale, Cal. and see if
you don't get a free copy of the
"Guide to Comic Book Fandom,"
an association of teens and adults
rehashing and reselling authentic
old comics.
"What resourceful and magni–
ficently malignant villains!" (I
don't care if he
can
act, Caesar
Romero is
not
the Joker!) "What
violence and butchery!" (Till Wer–
tham and the Comics Code came
along and swept the corpses off
the floor and with them, all chance
of preparing you "for the immense
and terrible cruelty of the world!" )
If
Sgt. Fury and the Howling
Commandos (after the Code) are
only permitted to say "consarn
it," they've gotta be kidding!
JONATHAN WOLF
MR. KLUGER REPLIES:
Anyone even remotely familiar
with rudimentary Kryptonology, as
Mr. Wolf alas is not, would know
that
Kal-El
may be satisfactorily
rendered in English as Clark Kent.
The so-called Superbaby stories
Mr. Wolf refers to form part of
the revisionist cycle that most
scholars have discounted in scrut–
inizing the Kent geneology. In Mr.
Feiffer's selected readings, the ori–
ginal documents have, quite pro–
perly, been resorted to, and these
make it indisputably clear that
489
young Kent assumed his Superman
identity, indeed conceived of it,
only
after
the unfortunate death
of his adoptive parents who at no
point had broached the Superman
concept to their adopted hulk.
Even granting the revisionist line,
one is still uncertain as to why
any
alter ego was necessary for
Kent to perform his extraordinary
feat; he might, simply, have served
as a lieutenant in the Metropolis
Police Department. I can make no
comment on Mr. Wolf's suggestion
that Miss Lane "threw herself off
cliffs," for I do not subscribe to
the current fashion of instant psy–
choanalysis based on the most cur–
sory data. Nor am I privy to Mr.
Kane's dream life (though one may
assume, I should think, there are
bats in his belfrey). As to Wonder
Woman's marital status, I can only
reiterate that he is the very model
of polymorphous perversity and that
his relationship with Mr. T revor
underscores my thesis that genital
gratification is irrelevant and, as
Norman O. Brown has suggested,
merely a form of repression when
practiced to the exclusion of other
forms of libid inal fulfillment. That
others were fighting the Nazis and
J aps in no way, of course, mitigates
the failure of Superman and some
of his sluggardly companions to
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