Power, by Dennis O’Neil
For a while now, I’ve been thinking that maybe Jonathan Lethem is the best writer of his generation. What prevents me from just coming out with it… Dammit, Lethem is the king! – is that I haven’t read many other writers of Lethem’s (and my son’s) generation. Maybe the Elvis Presley of prosemeisters is lurking out there someplace, with a birthday that puts him somewhere between 40 and 50, and I just haven’t heard of him. So let me be content with stating the obvious, that Lethem does his job well.
He writes novels and essays and, lately, comic books. But what I want to call your attention to and, incidentally, dub this week’s Recommended Reading, is his op-ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times. It discusses the latest Batman movie and relates the film to what’s happening in our tortured nation. It’s a pretty gloomy bit of superb writing. But how could it not be gloomy? I said it was about what’s happening to the good old U. S. of A., didn’t I? Where could cheer come from? Maybe Johnny Mac’s flacks?
Yeah, the market imploded and some of it received a bailout from the Feds and who will eventually foot the bill? Ol’ tax payin’ you and me, that’s who. But that’s not what’s eating my lunch. I mean… economics! Finance! Who understands that stuff? Certainly not me. (I used to think that those boring old guys in suits, whose job it is to understand that stuff, did, in fact, understand it. Guess not, though.) But what bothers me for the next five minutes, or until I see another newspaper or watch CNN some more, is that according to one poll, 54 percent of the pollees think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.
This gives me sadness, and a profound feeling of alienation, because nothing in Ms. Palin’s record, nor anything I’m aware she’s said since being anointed Johnny Mac’s running mate, indicates that she is even qualified for the governance jobs she’s already had, much less the biggest of the big leagues, and I wonder what they’re seeing that I’m not, my fellow Americans. Or do they want a leader who apparently believes the First Amendment has no more importance than the slip of paper in a fortune cookie? That denies the validity of evolution? That thinks the current military debacle is a mission from God… ? No point in continuing the catalogue… If my fellows know of these things and they don’t care about them, then the system is broken. If they don’t know… well. how could they not?
Way back in the late 80s, or maybe early 90s, an inker working on one of DC’s superhero comics rendered a female form rather more like the Lord made female forms than the mores of the time allowed. The editor dealt with the problem by putting a color hold – a purple one, I think – over what some would have deemed offensive nudity. Sex always wins. The lady’s charms shone clearly though the purple haze and a fuss ensued.
I never talked to either Jack Kirby or Stan Lee about politics, so I don’t really have any idea where they stood on the subject. My guess would be that following their political spoor wouldn’t take you very far west and that they didn’t have much sympathy for the hippie-rebels of the 60s (and here allow me to blush and hide my face). After all, they and their parents (and my parents) fought for a place in the American mainstream because, finally, acceptance meant an increased chance of survival and for those outside the tribe, who suffered the Great Depression, not surviving seemed to be a real possibility. Then here came the snotty kids with their tie-dye and their girly haircuts and their wiseass slogans saying that a place in the tribe was not worth struggling for – in fact, the tribe itself was stinking of corruption.
The comic book veteran was smiling as he leaned forward to read the lettering on the button fastened to my lapel: Let’s Legalize Pot. His mood changed instantly, to one of anger. He snatched the pin off my jacket, flung it into a wastebasket, and stalked from the room.
DC Comics’ boring old Web site saw a big relaunch over the weekend, perhaps coinciding with the record-breaking debut of The Dark Knight film.
Warner Bros. is apparently looking to emulate the success Marvel has had making its own movies, such as Iron Man and Incredible Hulk.
. Batman was my job; Indy was my hero. I may have been associating him with an earlier hero, Mr. Paladin, who was the central character in a once-popular, 30-minute TV western called 
Well, 
In days of yore, when cowboys and dinosaurs roamed the land and I was an undergraduate in a Jesuit-run university, not knowing exactly what one was supposed to do in a university, much less what the heck I, a butcher’s kid from north St. Louis, was doing at a university, I had what Friedrich Nietzsche might have called a “slave morality.” That is, I felt powerless and I resented and mistrusted every authority figure on the horizon, even the ones who were trying to help me.
