There I was, all poised to tell you all about 1602 by Neil Gaiman. The timing was right. I’d just borrowed it from the inestimable Northcote library. I’ve read, ooh, about twenty pages, which is more than most reviewers need. I’ve got some big study tasks to procrastinate about. I also have a smidgen of pride at having just overcome my fear of Neil Gaiman.
I contracted Gaimanophobia in Japan years ago. How I did so reads like a children’s story. Once upon a time in Tokyo, there were two expat English teachers who wanted a comic to read. One subscribed to 2000AD. The other subscribed to some Sandman knock-off featuring all sorts of archetypes and graced by a pretentious introduction from Neil Gaiman himself. I was the lucky subscriber, who paid the price in a (so far) lifelong addiction to 2000AD and all the other works of the House of Tharg. I don’t know if the other teacher is still getting House of Dreams or whatever it was called, but it put me off Gaiman for ages. Even today, I felt the fear and went for 1602 instead of The Sandman, because it seemed more familiar.
So what stopped me from giving you the benefit of my wit and wisdom as practised on thinly disguised versions of Marvel characters in Elizabethan England? Ironically the teaching profession.
One fine day I was being all virtuous, reading a teacher’s professional journal in search of tips on how to better instill Australian values into teenagers* when I came across an ad for ‘Vintage Australian Comics’ on CD. How could I resist? Besides, it might be good for my students. I got out the credit card, fired off $32.00 to Roger Stitson, of Stitson Educational Publishing and got my CD in ten days. So now I’m telling you about it because, firstly, Vintage Australian Comics is, in its cheesy way, more fun than Gaiman can ever hope to be and secondly because most of my vast army of readers will be familiar with Neil Gaiman’s work (or ‘oevre’ as he probably calls it). Gaiman’s stuff is in comics shops in Australia and Japan. I’ve got no doubt that Sandman books have shelf space anywhere where people flock to buy graphic novels. No doubt French bande dessine fans read Gaiman for the Lacanian/Foucauldian moments, whilst Italians spill very strong coffee on collected ‘Tales of the Sandman’ books in between changing governments and laconic mid-westerners –
(pause while I vow not to perpetrate any more ethnic stereotypes).
(One of the Shadow’s girlfriends seems to have eyes in the back of her head)
– whereas Vintage Australian Comics seems to only be published in the pages of the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English magazine, where a review from Alexandra Pierce of Sunbury College alerted me to this disc’s existence. For the 99.9999% of comics fiends who are not teachers of English in Victoria, that’s a damn shame. You can find out more than you ever need to know about Neil Gaiman by waving a finger at your computer, but only here (or at Sunbury College) can you find out about my latest investment.
So what did I get for my $40.00? I scored four issues each of The Phantom Ranger, Sir Falcon and The Shadow. The comics were published in Australia between 1949 and 1963. The dates alone make this collection gorgeous – just think how Marvel or DC collectors would be react to being told that something was published somewhere in a thirteen-year range. However, Stitson knows that Australian fans are made of more rugged stuff.
The stories, as Stitson admits, are very crudely written. They come from a time when the tidal wave of American comics had been held up by firstly World War Two and then some pretty restrictive trade practices. In July 1940, the Australian government banned imports of American comics as a money saving measure, thus leading to something of a boom for cheapo Australian comics. This company still does very well out of cheapo black and white Phantom comics.
Obviously Frew thought it would be nice to sell something as popular as the Phantom without having to pay Lee Falk for it, because both the Phantom Ranger and Sir Falcon are in part Phantom rip offs. The Phantom Ranger was raised by Navaho from an early age and somehow became revered by them. All the guy has to do is flap a blanket and send up four identical balls of smoke for the Navaho to drop what they’re doing and go round up a rustler or untie some hottie from the path of a train. They do his bidding despite the fact that the Phantom Ranger looks like the Milky Bar Kid with a mask on. Like the Phantom, the Ranger has the Indians thinking he’s immortal, “For over 200 years the Phantom Ranger has fought for peace and justice for both the Indian and the Whiteman”. By my reckoning, that means that the Phantom Ranger was in the mid-west when there were no whitemen to fight for. Anyway, the Indians call him Kina, which is presumably complimentary. If I were the Phantom Ranger, I’d be checking what the Indians call George Bush.
Sir Falcon may have been named after the popular Australian car (started here but bought up by Ford after the war), or it may be that bird motif on his chest. He’s yet another Phantom wannabee, who has stolen the oath. The Phantom swears an oath on the skull of his father’s killer, Sir Falcon and his descendants swear an oath on the sword of his slain father. In case you’re wondering, the oath is ‘to fight crime and wickedness forever. Since the oath is handed down from father to son, and since the sons dress in the same medieval knight outfit, ‘simple folk believe that Sir Falcon is immortal’. Not just simple folk are impressed by Sir Falcon; evil fez-wearing criminals learn to fear him too. Having sworn on the sword, Sir F carries guns everywhere and either shoots his enemies or just belts them with his manly medieval fists.
(Sir Falcon gets jiggy with it)
As with the Phantom Ranger, there is a bare minimum of exposition. Nowhere do we learn how Sir Falcon’s gigantic castle goes undetected in modern-day France, or even how he gets from A to B. When he goes to Africa, the natives never ask him what the Kina he’s doing wearing chainmail. Neither do we know where the wives come from to produce each man’s string of oath-taking kids. Probably if these comics had been roaring successes, they would have eventually wound up with the the gnat-straining nitpicking continuity concerns that bedevil mainstream comics (sample letter: ‘Dear Falcon Watch’, how come the Cloud of Concealment is purple when Sir F leaves the castle but green when he comes back? Didn’t the Mystic Martians who gave him the Cloud say it only worked when it was red-tinged? yours, concerned Fan with too much time on his hands’). As it is, Frew’s plagiaristic efforts are primitive in a kind of refreshing way.
Appearing with about two panels of introduction, The Shadow is not the guy who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. He is Jimmy Gray, a millionaire playboy who slips on a mask of “finest latex rubber”…. and appears in late 80s Madonna videos. No, just kidding, he slips on a mask of (sorry, I can’t type that without chuckling), finest you know what and becomes a cool daring enemy of crime and injustice. Not only does his millionaire playboy act take people in, he can also (like the early Superman) disguise himself and become ‘limpy’, a crim to whom other criminals chat about their devious plans. Like Bruce Wayne, Jimmy Gray can drop in on busy police commissioners at pretty much any hour of the day or night to say foppy things and learn what’s up with the latest big case. Since his father is a millionaire safe manufacturer, the Shadow can break any lock with a paperclip. That’s about it really – he fights crime, he gets briefly involved with good-looking women who think he must look really nice under the latex (no really. That’s what the bad guy’s vampy girlfriend says) and he punches a lot. What more do you want? My first thought on seeing him was that his super-power was turning black, but that’s just the latex.
(a bandit tries to stop The Shadow finding out who stole his mouth)
Sigh. It’s getting late. I look at Sir Falcon solving problems in Africa (the art in that story is so simple as to be quite cool). I read a few more pages of 1602. I wonder why such a talented writer as Gaiman couldn’t have taken a little more care over anachronisms. Nobody ‘had their own agenda’ back then, nor did anyone say “Are you asking me”? I think of the poor, frail Australian comics scene, such as it was then. All good for a laugh.
ps: Readers who are too tight to send $35 sun-bronzed Australian dollars to R.M Stitson, care of www.rmsed.com.au can sample some of the cheapness on his website and at http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/programs/exhibitions/kmg/2006/heroes/heroes_villains.html where an online catalogue for an exhibition of Austral thrills awaits you. Go on – find out who said “Streik mich! Es da Phantom Kommando”!
*our Prime Minister has decided that our teenagers should have ‘Australian values’. If you’re not Australian, you’re probably scraping along with some lesser foreign values. So don’t try to come here without learning the right ones.
