DENNIS O’NEIL: Tribute to a true master
Kurt Vonnegut is gone.
I’d like to say that I was a bit ahead of the crowd in discovering that, while he was a science fiction writer, he was also much more, but by the publication of Cat’s Cradle in 1963 a lot of people had found this wise, sad, funny man – particularly disaffected young people.
He was often likened to Mark Twain and the comparison’s apt. But while I unstintingly admire Mr. Twain (maybe such admiration is in every Missouri-born writer’s DNA), I think Vonnegut’s quality average may be a bit higher. True, he did not write as much as his predecessor – Twain was astonishingly prolific – but he always seemed to be at or near his best. I can’t remember reading any Vonnegut piece that I thought was second-rate.
He was pessimistic without being sour, famous without egotism, and he had compassion completely devoid of sentimentality. Like Mark Twain, he could voice unpopular opinions without offending those who disagreed with him.
The New York Times extracted a quote from one of Vonnegut’s novels, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, that can stand as a summation of the Vonnegut doctrine: “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
When F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life was a shambles and he couldn’t fulfill obligations to Esquire Magazine, his editor finally told him to write about why he couldn’t write. The result was “The Crack Up,” one of Fitzgerald’s most interesting pieces. (It includes a line I’ve always liked: “In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day…”) Okay, similarly: After writing the first five paragraphs of what you are being kind enough to read, I could think of no 300-word size idea to complete the amount of verbiage I’ve promised to deliver every week.
I don’t think not meeting that goal, once or twice, would be considered a capital crime. I mean, I wouldn’t expect ComicMix’s honcho, Mike Gold, to awaken me swinging an ax, though, of course, you never know. But, as suggested a week ago, if there were a god of deadlines, I would bow to him, or at least nod. Now, I promised myself to deliver every installment of this whatever-it-is no later than Wednesday afternoon which, as I sit in my lovely river town on a (finally!) sunny spring day, is about 24 hours away, and who knows what happen between now and then to prevent me from getting to the keyboard. So, in a highly lame fashion, I am emulating one of my (way) betters and telling you why everything I’ve typed since “kind” has been a waste of your time. And damnit, I’m still short a few words…ooops, no I’m not, not now.
RECOMMENDED READING: Anything by Kurt Vonnegut
Batman, The Question, Iron Man, Green Lantern and/or Green Arrow, and The Shadow, as well as all kinds of novels, stories and articles.
Dennis O’Neil is an award-winning editor and writer of comic books like
Ah, Mr. O'Neil. . . it's never "a waste of [my] time." Thank you, sir, for hitting your deadline. I'll be back next time as will you, I reckon. ;-)
Oh Man… Vonnegut's gone. That sound you hear is my heart breaking as yet another of my heroes leaves this world.
Like Kurt Vonnegut, you could write 300 words about your breakfast experience and it would be a treat.
Or 6 words 50 times.
Vonnegut effortlessly cultivated the Twain look later in life in a case of playing the hand you're dealt. I've tried growing my hair and a moustache and the effect is not Mark Twain but Edgar Allan Poe had he lived to flabby middle age and grown a moustache. Vonnegut in a pale suit could have been Sam Clemens' brother. He was probably flattered to be worthy of the comparison.
This was a great installment! Is the end of Hammer of the Gods: Back from the Dead, or merely the end of another of the short stories therein? In either case, I've really enjoyed it (as I have the print stories which came before). I look forward to more whenever the muse strikes you.
"Enemy of the Gods" ran 18 pages, plus a bonus splash by John Staton. This issue we were given NINE full pages (18 ComicMix double spreads). This is more pages in a single ComicMix Episode than we've seen in a while. And I can't help but wonder (because I tend to overthink things),l "What does this mean?""Enemy of the Gods" is over. "The Color (Moduck) Saga." "Fragments." "Modi Hits China" bled into the Modi/Skögul love and dream and fight sequence in Chapter 3. Going back, it's strange that SO many pages were used to establish a sense of journey and a sense of place (we are in CHINA), only to have the China Witch transform into Odin and press Modi into a timeless, placeless dream sequence. Modi falls forever and ends up on a ship in the middle of nowhere. Modi never even finished his quest of getting Odin back to Valhalla. Wasn't that his mission?There is a sequence where Skögul kills Modi with a sword, screaming, "Fly Modi!" Modi immediately wakes up on the next page…"Gah! A DREAM!" [Issue #9, page 65-66] This whole collection of story fragments feels like that. Maybe this shouldn't be titled, "Back From the Dead." Maybe the title of this should be, "Hammer Of The Gods: Fragments and Dreams." Ephemera.Every few pages the rug gets pulled out from under the readers feet. We fall and find Modi on a ship or a snowy mountain or waddling about as a Duck. I love the art, the mood, the scale, the epic scope of "Back From The Dead." But, I'm also a bit lost and confused and this feels like the last story. Is this the end? It easily might not be. And I don't want it to be. I just don't know where Modi will wake up next week or if there will be a next week. The thing this collection lacks is cohesion. The art style shifts. The writing style shifts. There's no overarching plot. The story fragments pop in and out, all middle, with little beginning or end. I'm reminded of a Randy Newman song I heard yesterday, "In Germany Before the War." It's one of those strange, character pieces by Newman. All middle. No beginning or end. Newman does that a lot. Here's another one. Sometimes "all middle" is good, if it's juicy enough.I miss Snorri, the Monk, from the Foward in Issue #1. I've wanted to see him pop in at the beginning and ending of these episodes like a Dark Ages, Scandihoovian Rod Serling. Again, I'm just looking for something to tie this stuff together. It was the way DC used to use Cain and Able or the Three Witches to tie together their horror books. Maybe there's at least one more issue of Hammer of the Gods left. Maybe we'll get a Afterward by Snorri.Oh well, nice job on this fragment and dream. I really enjoyed the cool colors on this one. The blues and purples. Very chilly, very frosty. Kudos to John! There's an interesting effect in this issue where the Giant tosses the rocks right at the "camera" and the rocks blur out of focus. That's a nice digital manipulation. I've rarely seen depth implied in comics by blurring the objects in the foreground. Neat.
Not a Dream! But maybe Hit or Myth? (Sorry!) This is not the last story for BACK FROM THE DEAD. This graphic novel runs through week 21. And the basic concept behind all of this is that we see the MYTH of Modi through many eyes and perspectives. I had been reading so many books about Viking myth and there were seemingly an endless number of stories about the gods – and even more fragments of stories about the gods. On top of that there were almost always stories about how, say, Odin got his dog – followed by a story where the dog is a wolf instead. After the passage of several ages of man we have very little to go on. The details do not agree – and that makes it all the more the stuff of legend for me. This is not a Marvel Universe where someone is working like crazy to track all of the details and keep them straight. This is much more a case of one storyteller trying to outdo the previous version of the tale. And Mike Oeming and I thought there was a lot of charm in the ability to tell a story unencumbered by "fact". I also kept thinking of the story that Mike Gold tells about his time as the PR guy for Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago Seven trial – how misinformation was his goal and job (and he did a good job at it). And yet when he reads history books today – his PR is now quoted as historical fact. So every one of these BACK FROM THE DEAD tales is a unique take on our characters. I think it makes for a richer reading experience. But I can see that if you are looking at it like it is the DC Universe, you might resist getting the idea.Oh – and in a print version of BACK FROM THE DEAD these daily format pages will not be two page spreads – they will be printed sideways as single pages. And we are only paid for the single pages – and that means technically the chapter this week is really a nine page chapter. It was also a good chunk of story. Next week is a single, complete, story that features guest art by my buddy, Neil Vokes.
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