Wondercon and my 401(k)

While the literary world is mourning the passing of one superhero right now (rest in peace,Gabriel Garcia Marquez!) and Christians everywhere are celebrating another this weekend, I've been thinking about comic book heroes after taking my boys to Wondercon in Anaheim, Calif. It was the perfect opportunity to make some acquisitions like these

and also to conduct a little research on what's-selling-for-what in the superhero market these days. I still have a bunch of old comics from my younger days, and they should be worth something, right? I just didn't realize how much.

Among the new acquisitions, I absolutely had to have a copy of "The Wedding of Scott Summers and Jean Grey" from X-Men, even though it's disappointing. Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, and John Byrne ripped little kids' hearts apart with "The Dark Phoenix Saga" back in the 1980s, and this issue is an attempt to heal up what's unhealable. I'm glad to have it, but the entire thing is far too sentimental to measure up to what Claremont & Company created. They chose the best, and only way to conclude that story. Nuff said.

On the other hand, nothing that the immortal Jack Kirby ever created can disappoint. While the price tag on his "New Gods" series scared me off (for the time being, at least), I picked up this nifty issue of "The Demon" instead. Switching companies, from Marvel to DC, did nothing to dilute or change his signature style and voice.  Open these pages and you instantly know where you are and whose world you've entered. Kirby was a true comics mythologist, and in this issue he gives us another terrific origins story for the aptly-named demonologist Jason Blood. Beware, faint-hearted readers!

Finally, I spotted the name of "Claremont" on the cover of a series about the heroes known as "The Sovereign Seven":

and when I realized that the name belonged to the same fellow who created the Dark Phoenix tales, and that he wrote this series for DC, not Marvel, I had just one reaction: I'm in!!!

As far as my 401(k) is concerned, my friends, Yours Truly owns several special old editions of certain comics, but I never knew their value. I never bothered to hunt in any comics price guides or surf e-Bay to see what they were worth.

One of these is an early issue of Daredevil, his battle against the Purple Man in #4, before the blind crusader switched to his devil-red costume:

... as well as this early appearance of storyteller Frank Miller ("300," "Sin City," "The Dark Knight Returns") in Daredevil:

Even then, early in his career, Miller had a fully mature, sophisticated touch. This issue is creepy! There's also a later issue of DD's that features Miller's introduction of the assassin Elektra:

In my mind, I can still see that comic book rack in the drugstore -- I can still hear it squeaking as my mother yelled at me and I frantically searched for something to buy. Elektra's silhouette and the look on Daredevil's face closed the deal for me.

And then there's the Dark Phoenix climactic issue (mentioned above) which is nothing short of Greek Tragedy, Marvel-style:

Well, my good friends, I found that these single issues range from $100 to several hundred dollars. I certainly can't quit my job anytime soon, but it was a nice discovery -- sort of like finding some old savings bonds in the attic that once belonged to Granny.

It's also a nice vindication of a childhood obsession, too. See? All that lawn-mowing money didn't go to waste afterall! What kind of stock portfolio gets this kind of return on investment?!

Not to mention that my boys and I have several more boxes of old comics to examine. Who knows what else we'll find?!!

You didn't get rid of that book, did you?

Yes, I nearly did.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber's The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance (W.W. Norton) almost escaped my home. It wasn't any fault on the book's part--on mine.

Have you done this before? I hadn't picked it up since it was published early last year, and as I went about some early spring cleaning last week, I decided to give it to the library. Since I couldn't give it the attention it deserved, I thought, maybe a library could. 

What a mistake that would have been.

A drawing peeked out from its pages — an ancient tureen inscribed with figures from Ukraine — as I was moving it to my giveaway bag, and I stopped. Before I knew it, I was deep in its pages, finding some new inspiration for my novel at just the right time.

Can't imagine what I might've lost if I hadn't noticed that image.

I'm sure that has happened to many of you, my friends.

Wayland Barber's book is a revelation. It is a survey of folk mythologies (mostly

Slavic) that's very idiosyncratic — in the way that James Frazer's Golden Bough is idiosyncratic, or Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. There's an exuberance and a tone here that's undeniably personal, even at its most authoritative moments, such as this one where she refers to the effect of certain spirits or "willies" (from vily; as in "that horror movie gives me a case of the willies"):

With a final push to the crops at Midsummer, the willies have now finished their work: the grain and hay have grown and ripened and await harvesting. All that remains is to reap what the Dancing Goddesses have created. Cohorts of young people go out all day to mow the hay, all the while chanting slow, rhythmic, antiphonal songs to time the long swings of the sharp scythes, until the movement becomes almost a dance and the sound dulls the senses of time and fatigue....

Isn't that lovely?

In considering the connections between dance traditions and fertility beliefs and customs, this professor emerita from Occidental College ranges across fields in search of flowers with supernatural meanings. She looks down into the surfaces of rivers and streams to see what water sprites might be gazing back. Sometimes she sees something.

It's a marvelous book with a style that is easy and accessible, but hardly easy to imitate. And I might've lost it, and lost the inspiration. A new declaration: no more spring cleanings!

W.W. Norton has produced yet another exemplary volume that sheds light on our common, mythic heritage. Coming soon to this blog:  more offerings from Norton that are worth your while. They're definitely worth mine, too.

P.S. Wayland Barber's book also made me unexpectedly heartsick over Ukraine. The old folk tales and practices that she records reminded this reader of the region's vibrant, deep customs — enduring, one hopes, in spite of all the current troubles.

A shield for your thoughts ... and Daniel Mendelsohn

Though I'm not in the newspaper trade anymore, where interesting people and topics flow constantly through the door,  I'm at the next best thing, a powerhouse liberal arts college. The  flow continues as brilliant minds visit — not in the hopes of getting good attention on the front page -- but simply in order to stretch their legs and show just why they deserve to be called brilliant.

I sat down today with Daniel Mendelsohn, one of a handful of writers who keep a shine on that venerable old plaque embossed with the word "critic." He's at Claremont McKenna College as a visiting fellow, and I was looking forward to meeting him. I never had while I was at the Times,  though I'd often hoped back then that we could bank up enough of our little book review budget to snag a freelance piece from him (him and also Neil Gaiman … with Gaiman, I tried and tried to get him. Lord how I tried). I mentioned that to him and he smiled.

He lamented the deflation of book coverage in newspapers, and he sounded an optimistic note about Pamela Paul and the New York Times. (While others decline, the Gray Lady, like the Dude, abides.)

In keeping with our surroundings, the conversation focused on the notion of the humanities in our tweet-afflicted, Facebook-smitten, tumblr-besodden era. (I'm sure that litany rings corny, but hey this is my blog. I'll do what I want.)

When we were done, and I went happily on my way, I realized that I truly was happy after we'd finished.

That's been a hard thing to achieve in the past several months, especially now as my family licks its wounds after a painful loss. (See the previous post.) That doesn't mean I've dressed in sackcloth and sat in ashes since December, that I haven't  laughed with my friends or broken into a weird tribal dance while my younger boy is practicing on his drums. I have, even as I feel the pangs of my mother's absence.

But as I left that interview, I was thinking of myth and Mendelsohn. He made a point that myths continue to appeal to us because we're hard-wired to appreciate them -- and because myth addresses those human needs that aren't sated by a fat paycheck or a career that causes a roomful of people to genuflect as you enter. Those human needs have to do with the milestones -- births, deaths, love, weddings, anniversaries, heartbreaks, and all forms of loss.

When we're mindful of them, myths prepare us in a special way for these things. They equip us in a way that Mendelsohn explains with a lovely lovely riff from an essay on the Iliad. He writes about the epic and ordinary scenes Hephaestus inscribes on Achilles' shield. That mixture of the high and low, the common and uncommon, leads to this reflection:

[T]he shield presents images of a city at peace and a city at war, of weddings and a lawsuit, of people dancing and people arming for ambush….. All of which is to say that when Achilles returns to battle—returns to deal out death—he is armed with a vision of life, at once expansive and movingly intimate, enormously rich but necessarily confined within a boundary that shapes it and gives it coherence.

Isn't that what the best stories -- myths -- do for us? Isn't that why, at the deepest and most vital level, reading and writing are as crucial to our daily life as food? (At least they should be.)

I returned to my office with this thought in mind -- feeling a little more secure, comfortable, shielded.

Related:

• Home page for Daniel Mendelsohn: http://www.danielmendelsohn.com

No one knew Custer better than Connell

"Why he was esteemed as an Indian fighter is puzzling. None of his frontier campaigns demonstrated particular skill or insight. Not that they were botched, just that his strategy could not be called brilliant.... He could be likened more to an actor than to a playwright. Invariably he gives the impression of a man on stage performing as he has been instructed to perform, delivering lines composed by somebody else.  Throughout the Civil War his smashing victories were plotted by other men."

So wrote Evan S. Connell in his 1984 book, "Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn." A few days ago, Connell died, at the age of 88, in his New Mexico home, according to the Washington Post.

I don't have much to add to any obituary, except that "Son of the Morning Star" is a book that belongs on the shelf of any writer aspiring to write history. Connell breathed life and color into the world of George Armstrong Custer much like Shelby Foote did for the Civil War. He was a writer's writer.

No one lives forever, and 88 is a ripe old age, of course, but that doesn't mean he won't be missed.

Related articles

• Evan Connell, U.S. author of Custer history, dead at 88: publisher (scooprocket.com)
• Evan S. Connell: A Master Of Fact And Fiction (wnyc.org)

A frustrated failure and his masterpiece: new in bookstores

Dan Brown thinks he knows Leonardo's secrets; so does Javier Serra and plenty of other novelists; but it's Ross King who's the true authority. With "Leonardo and 'The Last Supper' " (Walker & Company), he reveals the real circumstances -- minus all that business about Mary Magdalene and the Priory of Sion -- that led to the Renaissance genius' creation of his masterpiece.

Leonardo was in middle age when the project to paint Jesus and his Apostles came along--following a string of unfinished commissions.

What was the most recent, humiliating one?  It involved 75 pounds of bronze: The bronze had been intended for Leonardo's statue of Milan's Francesco Sforza astride a horse, but it was melted instead into cannon balls.

All Leonardo's planning, all his hopes ... gone (literally) in a puff of smoke from a cannon's mouth.

King deftly reconstructs everything -- Leonardo's circumstances and his execution of the painting, the historical context of 15th century Italy -- and infuses the figure of the artist himself with a fresh bloom, devoid of caricature.

That is no small feat: Some critics have treated the maestro from Vinci like an accidental genius or somebody's crazy uncle, a dabbler who was a bit nutty and lost in a cloud of experimentation in a messy studio.

That negative image seemed further reinforced a few years ago: Remember when the alarming news was announced that "The Last Supper" was disintegrating thanks to Leonardo's painting method? That surely didn't help his case either.

Ah, but wait, King points out, waving a cautionary finger, Leonardo created a special surface with a primer coat of lead white in order to "enhance the mural's luminosity" -- to make that solemn biblical scene glow with a timeless quality on the convent wall. That's hardly the strategy of a madman.

"Over the course of three years," King writes, "[Leonardo] managed -- almost for the only time in his life -- to harness and concentrate his relentless energies and restless obsessions. The result was 450 square feet of pigment and plaster, and a work of art utterly unlike anything ever seen before -- and something unquestionably superior to the efforts of even the greatest masters of the previous century."

Here, as in his books about Machiavelli and Michelangelo, King clearly demonstrates why he is the friend of every armchair traveler eager to understand life as it was actually experienced in the Italian past.

If someone in your family happens to share this historical appetite, well, then, you have just stumbled on an ideal holiday gift for them in "Leonardo and 'The Last Supper,' " haven't you?

Related articles

• The lusts of Leonardo da Vinci (apassion4art.wordpress.com)
• Leda and the New Testament (nickowchar.wordpress.com)
• Can We Ever Restore Leonardo's "Last Supper"? (bigthink.com)
• Leonardo and the Last Supper (wnyc.org)
• Chwast hits a Homer: new in bookstores (nickowchar.wordpress.com)