Kripal - Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics and the Paranormal

MUTANTS & MYSTICS

SCIENCE FICTION, SUPERHERO COMICS, AND THE PARANORMAL

JEFFREY J. KRIPAL

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO AND LONDON

Jeffrey J. Kripal is the J. Newton Rayzor Professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of six books published by the University of Chicago Press, including The Serpents Gift, Esalen, and Authors of the Impossible.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

2011 by Jeffrey J. Kripal

All rights reserved. Published 2011.

Printed in the United States of America

20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-45383-5 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 0-226-45383-9 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-45385-9 (e-book)

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.481992 (Permanence of Paper).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kripal, Jeffrey J. (Jeffrey John), 1962author.

Mutants and mystics : science fiction, superhero comics, and the paranormal / Jeffrey J. Kripal.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-45383-5 (cloth : alkaline paper)

ISBN-10: 0-226-45383-9 (cloth : alkaline paper) 1. Comic books, strips, etc.United StatesHistory and criticism. 2. Superheroes in literature. 3. Occultism in literature. 4. Science fiction, AmericanHistory and criticism. 5. Fantasy fiction, AmericanHistory and criticism. 6. Myth in literature. 7. Literature and myth. I. Title.

PN6725 .K75 2011

741.5'973dc22

2011004431

for my brother Jerry,
who collected and lived these fantastic worlds with me

THE SUPER-STORY

MEN DO NOT SUFFICIENTLY REALIZE THAT THEIR FUTURE IS IN THEIR OWN HANDS.... THEIRS [IS] THE RESPONSIBILITY, THEN, FOR DECIDING IF THEY WANT MERELY TO LIVE, OR INTEND TO MAKE JUST THE EXTRA EFFORT REQUIRED FOR FULFILLING, EVEN ON THEIR REFRACTORY PLANET, THE ESSENTIAL FUNCTION OF THE UNIVERSE, WHICH IS A MACHINE FOR THE MAKING OF GODS.

HENRI BERGSON, THE TWO SOURCES OF MORALITY AND RELIGION (1932)

CONTENTS

THE IMAGES

AUTHORING (AND DRAWING) THE IMPOSSIBLE

MAN IS A CREATURE WHO MAKES PICTURES OF HIMSELF AND THEN COMES TO RESEMBLE THE PICTURE.

IRIS MURDOCH

THE THING ABOUT COMICS... ITS THE MAGICAL ELEMENTS OF IT. THATS WHAT I LOVE MOST: THE ARTIFACT.... THE IDEA THAT THE COMIC FORM ITSELF IS REALLY BEAUTIFUL BECAUSE IT ENGAGES THE RIGHT HEMISPHERE AND THE LEFT HEMISPHERE OF THE BRAIN SIMULTANEOUSLY, SO YOURE PROBABLY GETTING INTERESTING HOLOGRAPHIC EFFECTS, WHICH I THINK IS WHAT ALLOWS COMICS TO COME TO LIFE IN THE WAY THEY DO.

GRANT MORRISON IN PATRICK MEANEY, OUR SENTENCE IS UP

T he mythical themes and paranormal currents of popular culture are generally transmitted through two modes intimately working together: words and images. Here something like the comic-book mediumserialized panels that look more than a little like frames of moving filmis definitely a good share of the message, and it certainly is most of the magic. In the spirit of the conclusion of my last book, where I suggested that we think of an author of the impossible as someone who can bring online both sides of the brain, I have transmitted my ideas here through one left-brain-dominant mode (writing) and one right-brain-dominant mode (graphic art). Moreover, in this same two-brained spirit, I have explained the illustrations in the body of the text, even as I have illustrated my ideas through the images.

I am reminded here of something the French chemical engineer Ren Warcollier suggested in his 1946 Sorbonne lecture, which became Mind to Mind (1948), a seminal text on telepathic drawings (les dessins tlpathique) that, along with Betty Edwardss Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), has informed my own impossible thinking about the secret life of popular culture. Warcollier, who was first awakened to the subject by his own telepathic dreams, believed that telepathic communications most likely reveal a form of psychical operation that employs paranormal processes, predates the acquisition of language, and reveals the very substratum of thought in what he called word-pictures. As Warcollier demonstrated through a series of drawings and his own text, condensed, telepathically communicated word-pictures are often creatively expanded on, exaggerated, and added to by the recipients imagination until they become words and pictures, and finally storiesin essence, minimyths.

Word-pictures. This is simply an initial way to suggest that there is something very special about the double-genres that we are about to encounter, and that it makes no sense at all to encounter them only in their word forms. The pictures are just as important, if not more so. Even if what the images carry cannot be captured by words, and especially when what they carry cannot be captured by words, these beautiful images can transmit something directlymind to mind, we might say.

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All images, unless otherwise noted, are from my private collection. They are reproduced here under the professional practice of fair use for the purposes of historical discussion and scholarly interpretation. All characters and images remain the property of their respective copyright holders credited above.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

LET THE BOY MATURE, BUT DO NOT LET THE MAN HOLD BACK THE BOY.

PHILIP K. DICK

T his is a book about some astonishing artists and authors, some of whom are still living and working among us. These individuals generously answered my insistent queries and read what I had written about them with both grace and helpful criticism. I am grateful, above all, to these practicing artists and authors: Doug Moench, Alvin Schwartz, Whitley Strieber, Roy Thomas, and Barry Windsor-Smith. In this context, I also want to thank Anne Strieber, who did so much to help me with Whitleys work and the Communion letters, and Lawrence Sutin, the pioneering biographer and editor of Philip K. Dick. Larrys two biographies of Dick and Aleister Crowley signal the core idea of the present book, namely, that the roots and effects of sci-fi and superhero fantasy are magical in structure and intent.

I would also like to thank a number of individuals from within the comic-book industry who helped me to understand that professional world. I am especially grateful to: Roy and Dann Thomas and Doug Moench again, for spending a week with a group of us in Big Sur and helping me with so many contacts and personalities; Ramona Fradon, for her own self-described gnostic quest and her teasing laughter at that oh-so-male fantasy that we call the superhero (I can still hear Ramona giggling); historian and archivist Bill Schelly, for his wonderful biography of Otto Binder and for pointing me toward Binders archives at Texas A&M; historian and artist Christopher Knowles, for his pioneering Our Gods Wear Spandex and stunning blog-essays on Jack Kirby and all things pop-gnostic; and graphic artist Arlen Schumer, for his dramatic lectures and insightful writings on the art of the Silver Age (and a really cool Batman drawing/autograph).