1.There are times when I can almost indulge myself in the delusion that I've found evidence of a secret textbook, known only to an elect of professional creators, and perhaps a few of their less-talented friends, containing the secrets of how to produce successful comic books. For across the history of comics there are key sequences presented and then re-presented here and there which are almost too similar for coincidence to excuse their existence, despite their appearing in quite different contexts and to quite separate purposes.
It's as if there is an experience-blessed "How-To" manual, laying out precise instructions which a creator might choose to follow when an absolutely specific effect is being sought.
2.Lost for a way to end a long-running and highly charged epic without (a) wanting to make your protagonist appear vainglorious and invulnerable, and (b) the conflict that's been closed to seem in retrospect to have been something of a triflingly foregone conclusion?
Well, why not turn to page 475 of the How-To-Do-Comics manual and check under the sub-heading "Pathos And The Downbeat Epic Ending", where you'll be shown a three-panel progression which works every time;
1) Portray your victorious protagonist exhausted by the concluded ordeal while at least one loved one races to their assistance.
2) Focus hard-in onto the faces of the protagonist and the loved one, showing (a) the depth of weariness and upset in the protagonist's face, and (b) the loved one placing a comforting hand on the hero's shoulder.
3) Close your tale with a shot of the defeated villain and the lover promising that (a) the fighting is over and (b) the protagonist has achieved their noble ends.
3.One of these unlikely and yet, given the sheer volume of comic books which have been produced over the decades, inevitable coincidences can seen in the respective conclusions to the opening arcs of Bill Mantlo and Michael Golden's "Micronauts", from November 1979, and Howard Chaykin's "American Flagg", from September 1984, where the relatively rare phenomena of the victorious hero too shocked and weary to grasp the fact and meaning of his victory can be seen working itself out in two remarkably similar 3-panel progressions.
It's not that the stories are in any way reminiscent of each other beyond the trick of their endings, but it is as if they've both been shaped with reference to a hidden and guiding third source, a secret set of recommendations which only the elect have reference to.
4. "The Micronauts: ... There Will Be Peace At Last", writer:- Bill Mantlo, artist:- Michael Golden (vol 1:11)
Panel 1:
In "There Will Be Peace At Last", Commander Rann of the Micronauts finds himself unable to grasp the truth of the fall of the vile Baron Karza. "Is -- is it over?" he asks his compatriots, clearly physically shattered and befuddled by his experiences. Behind him, his robot sidekick Biotron and, most importantly, his deeply-concerned lover Marionette, race to his aid, emphasising to the reader how the great victory has come at a considerable cost.
Panel 2;
Weeping with exhaustion and emotion, Rann is taken into the comforting arms of his lover Marionette.
Panel 3:
We are shown the empty armour of the apparently slain Baron Karza, while Marionette's words of reassurance to Rann are presented as a closing statement ;
"Thanks to you ... there will peace at last." (11:18:3-4)
5.
Mr Mantlo and Mr Golden's ending to that first Micronauts arc was a touchingly atypical conclusion to a superhero story of the time, and it would remain so to a somewhat lesser degree even today in 2010. Freeing themselves from the tradition of presenting their story's victors as fist-waving parade-leaders, theyn succeeded in accentuating Rann's achievement by symbolising the cost of the long struggle against Karza's regime in the Commander's overwhelmed and tearful response. In doing so, Rann's heroism was counter-intuitively made all the more significant by his inability to bear his emotions with the stoicism we still expect of heroic leads. His efforts and his personal losses have been so overwhelming that his very masculinity has been undermined, reducing him to the position usually occupied in more traditional heroic narratives by the weeping if brave heroine, or the aspiring but still callow boy sidekick. This is, as a consequence, a portrait of a man who's given absolutely everything to his cause, whose very reserves of personal restraint have been consumed in sustaining him, and the realisation of that sparks our sympathy just as Karza's spectacular defeat has triggered a state of four-colour catharsis. Pity and relief, schadenfreude and victory; it's a potently moving brew, made all the more powerful in the context of the time and its far less fluid gender roles. The weeping hero, the strong and supportive heroine, the technological shell of the vanguished antagonist, the coming of peace, and all at such a terrible cost; it's a progression of meanings which functions as if part of some wonderfully effective alchemical formulae.
6."American Flagg: Solidarity For Now, conclusion", writer/artist:- Howard Chaykin (vol 1:12)
Panel 1: Reuben Flagg finds himself similarly disorientated in the first of the final three panels of "Solidarity For Now". Reflecting the far less Kirby-esque tone of the comic, we see him sitting back and lost to shock rather than wracked by exhaustion and struggling heroically to rise. Yet, just as Rann was unsure of the identity of those around him when the Time Traveller had left his body and his battle ended, so too is Flagg apparently oblivious to either the burning body of his nemesis Scheiskopf above him or, indeed, of the fact of his own shattered leg. Mandy, in her turn, expresses the surprise and pity for his situation that emphasises the depth of his own sacrifice.
Panel 2:Just as Commander Rann was so utterly exhausted and disorientated by his travails that he could no longer control his emotions, so Flagg is shocked and traumatised to the degree that he retreats back to childhood Jewish myths to explain what's happened to him. Wide-eyed and unable to grasp that he might turn his gaze to Mandy's in order to communicate with her, he tries to explain to the both of them that Scheiskopf is " ... a golem -- ", a monster that can defy death and which can't be stopped. And if the stereotypically masculine Rann's weeping is a quietly shocking and endearing marker of how greatly that character had suffered, then the secular Flagg's uncharacteristic grasping at the myths of his own upbringing is similarly a telling transgression of the natural order of things. This is, as was Rann, a man to both admire and pity, because he's lost the essential components of his own identity is his attempts to do the right thing.
Panel 3:"Hush, Reuben -- you got him." Mandy promises him as the physically crippled and emotionally devastated Flagg collapses over in her supporting arms, a symbol of the community reunited with the slaying of the monster, who, in the best traditions of Mr Chaykin's work, is shown dead behind them with his arse quite explicitly on fire, while his survivors process the fact that they've actually outlived their very own golem.
7.I find it fascinating that both Rann and Flagg become more heroic the less they're obviously in control of themselves and their situations. Neither of them achieved their victories with any degree of comfort, control or forethought. There was no glorious master plan that either of them carried to fruition, and no overwhelming show of force by them that super-heroically won the day for either. Rann had been possessed during his final battle by "The Time Traveller" and the killing blow on Baron Karza was landed by an alien ally, the World-Mind. Flagg, as befits a far more prosaic species of hero in a tale conspicuously free of Kirby-esque space opera, was reduced instead at the close of his closing battle to desperately stabbing at Scheiskopf's neck with the glass that was shattered in pieces around them. For both Rann and Flagg, theirs were unlikely victories won at the very last moment through a mixture of chance and desperation, and as a consequence their last-ditch achievements left them shocked, tearful or bemused, necessarily comforted by loyal lovers, and seeming so much more deserving of victory because they came so very close, despite their very best efforts, to not achieving victory at all.
It's a three-panel trick which works so well in such different contexts that it could almost be imagined to have been reproduced from a mythical textbook containing the secrets of how to create excellent comic books, and to order, every single time.
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