Mighty Tetramorphin' Power Rangers

One of my favorite and most cited resources is "A Dictionary of Symbols" by Juan Eduardo Cirlot. While researching Tiger symbolism for my "Night Watch" post Day Destroys The Night I came upon this intriguing piece of information:

"[In China] Five mythic tigers together constitutes a symbol which is invested with the same meaning as the tetramorphs in Christian tradition, in so far as they are the defenders of the spacial order against the forces of chaos. The Red Tiger reigns in the south, his season being summer and his Element fire; the Black Tiger reigns in the north-winter is his season, and his Element water; the Blue Tiger reigns in the East, in the spring and amidst vegetation; the White Tiger predominates in the west, in autumn and among the metals; and, finally, the Yellow Tiger (solar in colour) inhabits the earth and reigns supreme over all the other tigers. This Yellow Tiger is located in the 'Centre', as the Emperor was situated in the heart of China and as China lies at the centre of the world. This quaternary division plus the centre as the fifth Element is, as Jung has shown, of archetypal significance in the symbolism of situation."

If you lived through the '80s, especially if you grew up in the '80s like I did, then this description naturally brings this to mind:



Not exactly the pattern Cirlot describes, but pretty damn close. This is Voltron, of course, specifically Voltron III or Voltron of the Far Universe, the Lion Voltron based on and built out of the Japanese anime "Hyakujuu-ou Golion" (Hundred Beast King GoLion/FiveLion). Undoubtedly this makes Voltron the Quintessential giant mecha. Here's footage from "Voltron" of the four elemental Lions activating, note the locales they emerge from:



The Fifth Lion, in this case the Black Lion, representing the Center, emerges at the castle from within a statue of a Winged Lion. A Winged Lion is a direct reference to the occidental Tetramorph, specifically representing the constellation Leo/Fire. The pilot of the Black Lion likewise wears a Red uniform, which further would associate with Fire. I'd like to think in this we can see how complex these symbol systems can be in their presentation, with the information perhaps distorted in synchronistic translation, or even purposefully rearranged. I believe it demonstrates how, as is the case with Lyra's Alethiometer, the information is multi-layered. Sara Lee symbolism.

We in fact see this elemental patterning to such a degree in Japanese anime, manga, video games, etc., that it is clearly traditional iconography. There are probably hundreds if not thousands of examples. As the title of this article implies, we clearly see it in play in many of the Japanese Super Sentai series (like "Golion", Toei/Bandai productions), which have been reworked and translated for American children as "The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers", and its antecedents.

This is not an unusual practice whatsoever, a cut and paste of anime for a Western audience. As a young child I was totally enthralled by "Battle of the Planets", about the super hero team "G-Force". I even had the lunch box. But of course I was too young to realize that this was a bastardized presentation of Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman). How could I not love this cartoon? The bad guy was a bat-like hermaphrodite, and the good guys were super science ninjas who dressed like Birds, for goodness sake, and they flew around in a space ship called "Phoenix" that burst into flame (on purpose) once per episode (as the ultimate resource of the team). Gatchaman is cited as the originator of the Five member team motif utilized in the Sentai works that followed.



The specific bird types their costumes represent are (l.-r.) Eagle, Owl, Swallow, Swan and Condor. I can't see a way to clearly relate these figures to Four or Five Elements, and I believe this is again due to complex symbol layering, but if I had to guess based on color schemes and predominant characteristics I would say Fire, Earth, Air, Ether and Water. While the Swan is certainly indicative of the element of Water, the status of the character as the sole female member (called "Princess" in "Battle of the Planets") differentiates her, and suggests the divinity of a Sovereignty figure (note the many, many Princesses in Japanese entertainment, Voltron being a ready example).

Heavily involved here is the interaction, the mutual influencing, of Eastern and Western artistic expression, a huge topic that I'm only going to nod to here. The Sentai genre inspiring Gatchaman is clearly inspired by American comic books, specifically animal based characters. Likewise I find some pretty clear examples of Japanese works that seem to have inspired Jack Kirby, for example. There is a great deal of Osamu Tezuka's atomic powered Pinocchio Astro Boy/Mighty Atom evident in Machine Man. And in terms of design, it's hard to imagine Kirby came up with the original look of Iron Man without any awareness of Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Gigantor, who is also known as Iron Man #28.






And if you're familiar with the Kirby designed Sentinels from the X-Men, you may agree with me that they bear a striking similarity to Japanese-style giant robots.

The Elemental pattern involving four or five is of course present in Western cartoons and comic books as well. I won't even get into Bill Willingham's "Elementals", too easy. I've brought this topic up before in Mercury Retrograde, making mention of the characters from the super hero films "The Incredibles" and "Zoom" (noting in both cases that Fire is specifically displaced) as extrapolations from the clearly elemental Fantastic Four created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee.


Art by Jack Kirby

The Thing is Earth, the Human Torch is Fire, the Invisible Girl is Air and Mister Fantastic is Water. One could read the Cosmic Energy that generates their abilities as the Fifth Element, and the position eventually is characterized by the omni-powerful Franklin Richards, the son of Reed and Sue, the product of their Chemical Wedding.

More specific attention to the Tetramorph pattern was noted in The Great Marvel Mysteries Part Two when I discussed Jean Grey/Phoenix/Marvel Girl, who is Ether, with the solar powered Cyclops representing Fire, the Iceman Water, the flying Angel Air and the Beast Earth.


Art by Jack Kirby


Art by Jack Kirby


Art by Jack Kirby

Naturally the same elemental pattern was applied by Lee and Kirby to the FF's supposed opposite numbers, The Frightful Four. The Sandman is of course Earth, the anti-gravity expert Wizard is Air, the super-glue using Paste-Pot Pete is Water and the prehensile haired Medusa is Fire.


Art by Jack Kirby

How great that the issue introducing the elemental Frightful Four included a guest appearance by the Quintessential X-Men.


Art by Jack Kirby

And at an engagement party for the pending Chemical Wedding no less. The Avengers, however, are not Elemental. They're far more planetary, or the days of the week, if you include Captain America along with the original lineup, and count the Hulk twice. Because the Apollonian/Dionysian Hulk stands for Sunday and Monday, Mars signifying Iron Man is Tuesday, Hermes resonator Captain America is Wednesday, Thor is of course Thursday, the flirty, sole female, the Wasp (Bee) is Friday, and the Titanic Giant Man is Saturday. I'm not saying this particular pattern is purposeful, I'm just saying it is.

Kirby's Madame Medusa is far more then just a member of a team of second-string villains though. She's something very special, a variation of human even more specialized and exclusive, even more distinctly esoteric, then Marvel's mutants. She's the Queen of the Inhumans, making her another Sovereignty goddess figure.  I had to wonder if these elemental qualities relate to Kirby's Madame Medusa if there was an extension of the concept apparent in the rest of the Inhuman Royal Family. I think I can argue that there is.


Art by Jack Kirby

Medusa is still Fire, Gorgon (yes the group includes both a Medusa and a Gorgon) is Earth (very apparently given his Bull/Goat appearance), Black Bolt is Air (the sole flier, with super ultra-sonic powers), and Triton is Water (obviously). Crystal then is the Quintessence, as she controls the four Elements. This leaves Karnak out, but we might note that Karnak has no super powers. Instead he is a master of super-esoteric arts, a monk. Karnak is the high priest of the spatial order his compatriots represent. Also great is the Inhumans "dog" Lockjaw, a living Stargate, absolutely appropriate, a great item of surrealism on Kirby's part.

Given the major level of influence that Kirby has had on popular culture in general, and to super hero media in specific, I bet we could find all sorts of interesting expressions of this symbol system. I'm interested in hearing other people's observations. To demonstrate how far-ranging the expression of the elemental qualities can be, I direct you to my article Tetramorph(eus) and the Blue Illusions for a sneaky example from "Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones". Or how about Alex Toth's late 60's Hanna-Barbara cartoon "The Herculoids"?



Energy-rock shooter Tundro is Fire, flying dragon Zok is Air, shape-changers Gloop and Gleep are Water and the Rock Ape Igoo is obviously Earth. Plus I think Zandor, Tarro and Dorna are something of a Royal Family. At any rate Zandor as the leader of the Herculoids occupies the Quintessential position.

Another subtle application of the elemental pattern comes from Marvel's "Power Pack", created by writer Louise Simonson and illustrator June Brigman.


Art by June Brigman

Power Pack's powers relate to four fundamental scientific principles, gravity, light, mass and energy, but we can observe that Alex/Gee controls gravity (Earth), Julie/Lightspeed flies (Air), Jack/Mass Master becomes vaporous (Water) and Katie/Energizer disintegrates matter and emits explosions (Fire). Eventually Power Pack gained a fifth member, and we have no difficulty viewing him as the Fifth Element, because he's the aforementioned Franklin Richards.


Art by June Brigman

Dig the Moon Boots. Franklin's Power Pack emblem, its worth noting, is an Eye emitting a beam of Light.

Want one more? I got a good one, with a really sneaky application of the Elemental Pattern. I'm talking about the original Doom Patrol, created by writers Bob Haney and Arnold Drake and illustrator Bruno Premiani. Through what can only be considered sheer synchronicity DC's Doom Patrol debuted in "My Greatest Adventure" in the summer of 1963, just months before Marvel's "X-Men" hit the stands. Both titles featured a team of super heroes that felt ostracized by the outer world due to their freakish natures, and both were led by a wheelchair bound scientist. While it's not possible that Kirby's X-Men was a take off of the Doom Patrol, it is apparent that the Doom Patrol was directly influenced by the Fantastic Four and the Marvel comics style in general.

Now, the characters are not elemental in nature, not really. Cliff Steel/Robotman is a human brain implanted in a super strong robot body, Rita Farr/Elasti-Girl (note this name was used in "The Incredibles") can both shrink and grow, Larry Trainor/Negative Man could project an anti-energy being from his body, and Niles Caulder/the Chief was just very, very smart. I think arguments could be made that the powers and characteristics of the Doom Patrol do relate to the four elements, but there's a clearer indication of the pattern that comes in a different manner. Here are the origins of the Doom Patrol. All art that follows is by Bruno Premiani.

















Is that great or what? The elemental indications come in the characters' origins, Rita in the Water, Larry in the Air, Cliff on the Earth, and the Chief had a bomb, Fire, implanted on his spine. Also note the use of the name R-2 for a faithful robot here in the mid-sixties (even better, he's also RA-2).

One more thing before I go. In Bat Time Bat Channel I included this work of Pop Art by Roy Lichtenstein:



That's quite clearly the helmet of Magneto depicted in the painting. The face underneath, however, actually was traced from an image of the Chief from an episode of the Doom Patrol, drawn by Premiani:



How strange. These characters are unrelated, being from different companies. The Chief pretty easily relates to Professor X, but what's really boggling is that both characters, Magneto and the Chief, had controversial reworkings by Chaos Magician comic book writer Grant Morrison. In both cases Morrison took good characters (Magneto having been reformed more or less at that time) and made them fundamentally evil, a little retrograde action. What does Grant Morrison knows about Roy Lichtenstein's Image Duplicator?

A Magic Blue-Elf Theory

Fictional circus poster from "X2"

I rewatched "X2/X-Men United" recently and an interesting detail struck my attention. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it. The movie begins with an assassination attempt on the U.S. President by a brainwashed Nightcrawler. As an X-Men fan I was not totally enchanted by all the choices they made for the character, though Alan Cumming was excellently cast (speaking of interesting effects of casting, how great that Kitty Pryde of "X-Men 3" is played by Ellen Page, who is also "Juno"). There is a very interesting allusion director Bryan Singer made just as the Nightcrawler character was introduced.



Prior to his attack on the Secret Service and the President, a disguised Nightcrawler was part of a White House tour group. IMDb's "X2" trivia listing notes that in this scene, portraits of assassinated Presidents Lincoln, McKinley and Kennedy are prominently displayed (and also Washington, of interest maybe to Washington/Weishaupt theorists). This makes easy enough sense for the scene that follows, however, the interesting thing was a decision to feature the famous 1970 Aaron Shikler "Oil Portrait of John F. Kennedy" with Nightcrawler beside it displaying a highly similar posture as Kennedy in the portrait. This was undoubtedly done purposefully.



I find this brief moment one that resonates on more then one level. We quickly learn that Nightcrawler was under the mind control of the mutant hating army Colonel William Stryker (played by Brian Cox). Nightcrawler is a mutant Manchurian Candidate. Thus this visual connotation between the character and a posthumous portrait of JFK seems a very economic manner in which to make a subtle statement about Lee Harvey Oswald.  Mind control is one of the major themes of "X2" and a point I'll be returning to in the course of this article.

But I don't think that's quite the sum of what is being said with the Nightcrawler/JFK shot. It is not Lee Harvey Oswald whom Nightcrawler is being paralleled to, it in Kennedy himself. This certainly does not make a lot of immediate sense, and the typical reaction, if a viewer were to note this subtle symbol-play at all, would be to make the leap to Oswald. If I was forced to make a bet I would say that was the film maker's intent. However, synchronistically it says something else about the Nightcrawler character and the X-Men franchise in general.

My intent with writing on the X-Men comics was to start at the beginning and work my way through to my terminus point as a regular reader in the late '80s. I did not intend to 'port about randomly, but there's something here I can't ignore or store away for the moment when my organization catches up to my intentions. So let's talk about Nightcrawler.


Art by Dave Cockrum

The name, Nightcrawler, has the connotation of one who moves through the darkness, thus an adept of the Mysteries/Occult. The character's real name is Kurt Wagner, which I've always assumed was a reference to German composer Richard Wagner. Note the yonic, or grail-like shapes of Nightcrawler's costume. This is in fact a trait shared by most of the costumes of the second generation of X-Men. The sole exception was the hold over from the original team, the linear Cyclops.


Art by Dave Cockrum

As the story goes, Nightcrawler was originally designed by illustrator Dave Cockrum as a character for DC's Legion of Super-Heroes (due primarily to Cockrum's important tenure on both titles there are several links between the Legion and the X-Men). According to Wikipedia the design was rejected, oddly, for being "too alien". When Cockrum moved from DC to Marvel the character was redeveloped by Cockrum and writer Len Wein as one of the second generation X-Men. His first published appearance in May 1975's "Giant-Size X-Men" #1.

A mutant from Germany, the infant Kurt Wagner was described as being found abandoned in the Bavarian Alps by a gypsy/sorceress named Margali Szardos. His supposed father Eric Wagner was found nearby dead from a heart attack. Margali made a living as a fortune-teller for a small circus, and she brought the infant to them. The circus folk accepted his freakish appearance and he was raised as one of their own. Margali acted as his foster mother and his best friends were her son Stefan and her daughter Jimaine. Kurt trained and worked as an acrobat and aerialist at the circus. As I've said before, the circus always makes a nice reference to the zodiac.

As a young adult Kurt quit the circus when it was bought by a Texas millionaire who planned to move the best acts to the United States, and intended Kurt be moved to the freak show. Kurt then made his way to the village of Winzeldorf where his foster brother Stefan was living. Kurt found that Stefan had gone mad and murdered several children. During a violent confrontation Stefan died when his neck was accidentally broken. Based on his demonic appearance, the villagers assumed Kurt was the one who murdered the children, and he was attacked by an angry, torch-wielding mob. He was rescued by Professor X who then recruited Kurt as one of the New X-Men.

Later, as depicted in 1980's "X-Men King-Size Annual" #4, Margali cast Kurt into a facsimile of Dante's Inferno as punishment for Stefan's death, for which she mistakenly held Kurt responsible. With the help of Doctor Strange the X-Men rescued Nightcrawler and the truth was revealed to Margali by Strange's All-Seeing Eye of Agamotto. At this time Kurt also learned that his foster-sister Jimaine, a sorceress like her mother, had been posing as his girlfriend, Amanda Sefton. It is one of the X-Men's stranger adventures, which is really saying something. In a story titled "Nightcrawler's Inferno", Amanda/Jimaine is then a subtle Beatrice. There is a further, more complicated Dante connection in this equation as well.

Eventually Nightcrawler learned that his birth-mother is the mutant, terrorist leader of the second Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, the blue Mystique. At a later point, in an unpopular storyline, Nightcrawler's true birth father was revealed as the demonically named Azazel, an evil warlord from a race of demon/mutants. Originally long-time X-Men writer Chris Claremont intended a very different, and far more intriguing parentage for Nightcrawler. Claremont's concept was for Nightcrawler to have been the son of Mystique and her long-time female companion, the precognitive Destiny. The shape-shifting Mystique would have taken male form and impregnated Destiny, making Mystique Kurt's female father. This concept was nixed as too controversial. That's a shame, but I rather like this detail as part of the esoteric origin of Nightcrawler, the offspring of Mystery and Fate. Between Mystique, Destiny and the green-skinned, ram-horned Margali, Nightcrawler has three mothers, all of whom resonate aspects of the Goddess. Tripartite depictions of the Goddess are to be expected.

This combines with Nightcrawler's powers to make a character of high intrigue. Nightcrawler is of course a teleporter, a living stargate. He shares Spider-Man's ability to walk on walls and his super-human agility. The two male, goddess resonating figures hold much in common. Another ability of Nightcrawler's, one erratically presented, is his shadowy nature. Even in normal lighting Nightcrawler is typically depicted as being partially in shadows. At one point he learns (from leprechauns no less) that he not only blends into the shadows, he becomes completely invisible in darkness.

But what does all of this have to do with JFK? One factor is that Nightcrawler is depicted as a Catholic, and of course Kennedy was the first and so far only Catholic U.S. President. In another relatively recent storyline Nightcrawler nearly became a Catholic priest and in a convoluted storyline was almost made the Pope of the Marvel Universe. In "X2", after Nightcrawler fled the White House, he hid out in an abandoned church in Boston. There's no real reason for the use of Boston in this movie and I wonder if it was utilized as a further synchronization to Kennedy.

The other shared detail of Nightcrawler and Kennedy is as targets of assassination. Nightcrawler is one of the many Marvel characters who was killed prior to the events presented in the monumental X-Men storyline "Days Of Future Past". Details of his death in this alternate time line were later revealed when Rachel Summers escaped her own dystopian reality and joined the cast of the X-Men. We learn the dominance of the Sentinels was preceded by an assault on Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters. As Nightcrawler and his (in that reality) wife Amanda Sefton walked Illyana Rasputin, the younger sister of Colossus, to meet her school bus, all three were gunned down by unseen snipers. Another assassination victim in this attack was Professor X, who is frequently compared to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.


Art by Bill Sienkiewicz

"X2" includes a prominent, though far less dramatic or devastating, military assault on Xavier's School. It is safe to say that Singer was aware of the source material of this plot point. The primary comic book source for the story of "X2/X-Men United", however, is not "Days of Future Past", but rather the exceptional 1982 Marvel Graphic Novel #5, "God Loves, Man Kills".


Art by Brent Anderson

Like "X2", "God Loves, Man Kills" featured the X-Men teaming with Magneto to stop a plot by anti-mutant activist William Stryker. One of the major differences, however, is that Stryker, rather then being an Army colonel, was a fundamentalist Christian televangelist whose ministry was spreading a message that mutants were the product of Satan. As in "X2", Professor X was abducted and brainwashed by Stryker into a telepathic weapon of mass destruction, hooked up to a machine that enhanced his abilities to the point where he could murder every mutant on the planet simultaneously. In the graphic novel the brainwashing involved a series of induced hallucinations, including a nightmare where Xavier was crucified by the X-Men. For some reason this was depicted as taking place atop one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

And these are not the only times when the Nightcrawler character has been presented in assassination themed storylines. I mentioned the similarities between Nightcrawler and Spider-Man and indeed the two have been depicted on cordial terms, for the most part, since early in Nightcrawler's existence. Of course when they first met they mistook one another as enemies and fought for awhile, but that's to be expected of super heroes. They became friends afterwards. The two first met in October 1976's "The Amazing Spider-Man" #161, the first part of a two-issue story, written by Nightcrawler co-creator Len Wein and illustrated by Ross Andru.


Art by Gil Kane and John Romita

A string of sniper shootings leads to Spider-Man and Nightcrawler mistaking one another for the killer. The shooter is actually purposefully impersonating the Templar resonating vigilante Punisher, and is eventually revealed to be a plot by the Punisher's archenemy, the Dick Tracy-esque Jigsaw (Jigsaw Killer, did you see "Saw"?). I am highly intrigued lately by the connotations of team-up comics, particularly involving Spider-Man and the X-Men, and it's a topic I'll be returning to, I believe in my next post.

If all of that's not confusing enough here's another rather convoluted connection between Nightcrawler and Dante Alighieri and the "Inferno" portion of "The Divine Comedy". Bear with me. Back in the Golden Age of comics when Marvel was Timely, one of their first characters was the Tarzan-clone jungle lord Ka-Zar (as such a definite Dionysus resonator). Ka-Zar actually first appeared as a text character in a pulp magazine in 1936. In the Silver Age the name was reused by Lee and Kirby for a character who debuted in "X-Men" #10, March of 1965. This Ka-Zar was still a jungle lord, but the world he occupied was the "lost world" The Savage Land hidden in Antarctica, populated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Ka-Zar's constant companion is the saber-tooth tiger Zabu and he later marries the leopard-skin clad Shanna the She-Devil a jungle heroine in her own right, both of whom reemphasize Ka-Zar's Dionysian nature.

Ka-Zar subsequently appeared several times in the pages of the X-Men and other Marvel titles and starred in several short-lived series of his own. In "Ka-Zar the Savage" #11, February 1982, the demonic sorcerer Belasco was introduced. Belasco was created by writer Bruce Jones and illustrator Brent Anderson, the artist of "God Loves, Man Kills".


Art by Brent Anderson

As the story goes, the Savage Land was created millions of years in the past by an alien race called the Beyonders (entities separate from the Cosmic Cube born/Secret Wars causing Beyonder) as a kind of zoo. The Savage Land was discovered during the days of ancient Atlantis, and they built a kind of amusement park there, one with a strong resemblance to Hell. In the 13th century Belasco, a Florentine alchemist, made a pact with a race of Lovecraftian "Elder Gods" (a nod no doubt to the Antarctica based "At The Mountains of Madness"). They made him immortal and a powerful sorcerer. In return the now demonic Belasco was to sire a race of Earth-born demons.

He kidnapped Beatrice, the true love of Dante Alighieri, and fled with her to Antarctica, raping and impregnating her on the way. He was pursued by Dante. The chase led them to the Atlantean amusement park in the Savage Land. Dante arrived but was too late to save Beatrice who died in childbirth. Dante and Belasco fought and during their combat a pipe containing some kind of liquid coolant was burst and Belasco was frozen solid, and subsequently buried in an earthquake. Dante returned to Florence and loosely recounted the tragic adventure as part of his epic poem (in which Lucifer is depicted frozen in the bottom Circle of Hell).

Hundreds of years later Ka-Zar and his companions discovered the amusement park while exploring the Savage Land, and found the immortal Belasco had revived. Belasco determined that Shanna was the reincarnation of Beatrice and decided to make her his new bride. Ka-Zar, of course, managed to save Shanna. For his failure, Belasco was punished by the Elder Gods, cast into the timeless dimension called the Otherplace or Limbo. Belasco next appeared in the pages of the X-Men when he kidnapped the aforementioned Illyana Rasputin, seemingly because her mutant ability allowed her to directly enter and exit Limbo. The X-Men pursued through circular portals between worlds.

Apparently X-Men from more then one reality did this and one group became lost in Limbo for many years, during which time Wolverine and Colossus were killed. Nightcrawler was eventually corrupted by Belasco and became the sorcerer's lackey. The X-Men from the "regular" continuity managed to escape however (with the help of the alternate Storm who had become a powerful sorceress in her own right), but lost hold of Illyana just as they were exiting Limbo. They managed to grab hold of her again but when they did they found that she had aged several years. In that time she had been trained as an apprentice of Belasco, eventually overthrowing him and becoming the new ruler of Limbo.

This story was further related to Nightcrawler years later in the pages of "Excalibur", involving his foster mother Margali and his girlfriend Amanda/Jimaine in overtly complicated ways (Winding Ways). Then in Alex Ross and Jim Kreuger's alternate Marvel future story line Earth X, which is not considered canonical, Belsaco was revealed to have originally been a time-displaced Nightcrawler who had lost his memory and morality, and gained a similar but different hued form, due to a deal he made with Mephisto (the same devilish entity with whom Marvel had Spider-Man recently make a deal). So again we have the pure-hearted Nightcrawler turned into a tool for an evil plot. In this case a Mephistian Candidate.

Tingly Intuition

Art by Steve Ditko

Note: This article predates the relaunched films with the traditional web-shooters.

You know that Peter Parker really is just a regular guy with everyday problems like the rest of us. Here we see that he's a dandruff sufferer who, always strapped for cash, has agreed to do some product endorsement. The left-side is tingling!

That is of course a joke. For the most part when I describe Spider-Man as "the Mugwump Spider-Man" as I did, for example, in Doctoring Art Gotic Part IV , it is meant as a joke as well. Cause I think it's funny. But the more I think about it the more inherent truth I see in the comparison.


Art by (I believe) John Romita

If you've never had this concept of Spider-Man before, I apologize, but you gotta admit, he's ejaculatory. He's super ejaculatory. Spider-Man's ejaculations are multi-functional and nigh-unbeatable. It's one of his two truly great powers, a great story-telling device, a kind of street-level Green Lantern's Ring, all the more entertaining from its inherent limitations. The switch to organic webbing for the movie only makes this connotation more easy to recognize. It is inherent in any version of the character.

But the Mugwump thing is deeper then that with Spider-Man, and it's other level involves Spider-Man's other truly great power. But I'll get back to that.

The Mugwumps in question are not the Republican supporters of the Democrat Grover Cleveland, the British pacifists, or the 19th century VD medicine. It is surely the inspiration for the early '60s band name, The Mugwumps, members of which went on to perform in the Mamas and the Papas and the Lovin' Spoonful. And I just can't imagine J.K.Rowling didn't know what she was doing when she titled Albus Dumbledore the "Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards". Indeed.


Dumbledore loads his Pensieve

But I'm talking about the Mugwumps from William S. Burroughs' novel "Naked Lunch", and more specifically the creatures as they were presented in the 1991 film adaptation.
Burroughs meets his creation on the set of "Naked Lunch"

I read "Naked Lunch" probably fifteen years ago. I've seen the film many times. Mugwumps are a sentient species that excrete semen that acts as a super-hallucinatory drug in the non-reality of Interzone. Have you seen "Naked Lunch", because if you haven't you should. I'm not saying you're going to enjoy it, but you should see it.

You may now be asking if I think that Stan Lee made a superhero out of a Mugwump on purpose. Well, it isn't impossible, but it's pretty unlikely. "Naked Lunch" was first published in Paris in 1959. A separate version, based on a 1958 manuscript in the possession of Allen Ginsberg, was published in the United States in 1962, the same year that Spider-Man debuted.


Art by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko

Spider-Man first appeared in "Amazing Fantasy" #15, August 1962. The last issue of the series that once featured the adventures of Doctor Droom. In March of 1963 the title was relaunched as "The Amazing Spider-Man". Jack Kirby drew the famous cover above, inked by Ditko. Kirby actually played a significant if controversial role in the creation of Spider-Man. Stan Lee has stated the character was inspired by the pulp character The Spider. Ditko invokes animal based super-heroes, specifically DC's (blatantly Horus resonating) Hawkman, and further connects the concept of a spider based character to already established insect based Marvel super hero Ant-Man.

As the story goes Lee wanted to create a super hero who was a teenager, but a super hero in his own right, not just a sidekick like Robin or Aqualad. And he wanted this teenager to be more real, in the happening Marvel style, with troubles just like the real kids, on top of his super adventures. He received approval for a character called Spiderman and went to Jack Kirby with it.

Jack Kirby, with his partner Joe Simon, had already created a spider based character, of course, back in the fifties, beating Lee and even Burroughs by at least a couple of years. Kirby has stated that he and Simon pitched the Silver Spider character for Crestwood publications "Black Magic" title. How great is that? The literal Occult-Kirby Spider-Man connection. Note the use of Silver for the character's name.

But it is an occult matter in another way as Joe Simon tells a different story, and one that Kirby affirmed as true shortly before his death. In Simon's own words:

"There's an interesting story behind Spiderman. I don't want to go into it fully here, but I can tell you that back in 1953 I created a superhero, a young man with spider-like qualities. I put the character in a presentation for a publisher and entitled it Spiderman. I designed the Spiderman logo. I had Clarence Beck do the penciled sketches. He was the predominant artist for Captain Marvel, the man who gave Captain Marvel its special comic style, and I believe he came out of semi-retirement to work with me on this. At the last minute, I changed the name from Spiderman to the Silver Spider. I thought at the time there were just too many 'man' titles around,-Superman, Batman, that stuff. I took the presentation up to Harvey Comics where it languished. I kind of forgot about it after a while. I was onto new projects. I wasn't looking back; there was no time to look back. You went on; you created. In the late 1950s, Archie Comics asked me to create a new line of superheroes. I gave the Silver Spider sketches to Jack Kirby and I changed the name again, this time to The Fly. Jack held onto the sketches and when Stan Lee asked Jack for new ideas, Jack brought the original Spiderman pages to Marvel Comics. Jack was busy with other work so Stan handed the pages over to Steve Ditko. Ditko, on first seeing those pages, commented, "This is Joe Simon's Fly." Steve Ditko worked up his own version of the character's costume. The comic that was published was called Spider-man. Marvel had stuck a hyphen in between the Spider and the man, for trademark reasons I suppose. Jack told me this years later. A few years before he passed on, he sent me back my original Spiderman logo."

This is all pretty great. It's from an interview with Simon presented at simoncomics.com, which you should check out for a link to a Joe Simon sketch of the original Silver Spider. It's very interesting too that the great C. C. Beck(who looked a bit Dumbledorish) played a role, and that the Kirby/Simon character The Fly is the crossbreed/midpoint between the Fawcett Captain Marvel and Spider-Man. And then there's that other David Cronenberg film.

So Kirby revived the Silver Spider as Spider-Man, keeping the magic ring motif, and apparently the transformation into an adult super hero. He was armed with a "web-gun". It wasn't quite what Lee was looking for and he passed the project onto Ditko. Ditko designed the costume, maybe the most brilliant in the genre's history. Ditko also did away with the gun and mounted the web-shooters on Spider-Man's wrists. Ditko certainly came up with the distinctive hand gesture Spider-Man utilizes to emit his webs, which he shares with Lee/Ditko's Doctor Strange. There's another interesting contention on this point. At the time he designed Spider-Man, Ditko was sharing a Manhattan studio with fetish artist Eric Stanton. Stanton has claimed no true credit in the creation of Spider-Man save for the possibility that it was he who thought the webs should come from his hands. A fascinating detail for the heroic Mugwump.

Looking back at the Cronenberg version of "Naked Lunch", there are a number of interesting common elements that almost want to make one think of Spider-Man in a far more existential manner. First of all, both the film and the famous origin of Spider-Man are initiatory stories. Note that Peter Parker is not only an orphan, but also a widow's son as his adopted father Uncle Ben dies due to Peter's irresponsibility leaving him with just Aunt May. For all we know Aunt May is a literal virgin mother to Spider-Man. The orphan motif is also in Kirby's The Fly. Peter's initiation involves learning his higher calling from his martyred Uncle, "With great power comes great responsibility". This is Spider-Man's essential statement. Great power does not just confer responsibility for that power, the power and the responsibility are one and the same. Having great responsibility then likewise means that one has great power. What is Spider-Man's great power? Greater then his webs? It is his Spider-Sense of course. Intuition is Spider-Man's great power. Intuition is Spider-Man's great responsibility. When he ignored his intuition it resulted in the death of his adopted father. Like Batman, this was a hard, swift initiation and it led to Spider-Man becoming the greatest hero of the Marvel Universe, and a mass initiator for other super heroes for that matter. This is a trait Spider-Man largely adopted from his friend/rival the Human Torch who frequently played a similar role in the early Silver Age.

The initiation process in "Naked Lunch" is of course much different and much darker. There is the fatal William Tell act of course, but I'm thinking about the three levels of narcotics William Lee, played by Peter Weller, engages in, increasingly bizarre, unreal, monstrous and powerful. The first stage of his trip to the unreality of Interzone comes from ingesting the Bug Powder he uses as an exterminator. This leads to lucid hallucinations that cause Lee to believe he is a secret agent working for a company that is fighting an organization called Interzone Incorporated. Lee travels to Interzone, a mixture of Tangiers and Wonderland, and writes reports on Interzone Incorporated's activities. These notes go on to become the novel "Naked Lunch". Lee writes his reports into a living, insectile typewriter named Clark Nova. I really enjoy the Kafka/bug powder level's easy synchronization to Spider-Man and his radioactive spider-bite.


The original blogger?

Lee (is that cool or what?) is a very strange kind of reporter writing essays on the events of his paranoid delusions. Peter Parker is a freelance newspaper photographer who specializes in taking pictures of himself as Spider-Man, photos that are used to defame him.

While in Interzone Lee moves off the toxic bug powder to the transcendental Mugwump Jism. This then coincides with the second level of Peter Parker's initiation into a super hero. Like an alchemical master Peter (perhaps intuitively) develops his wondrous web-fluid. This is something the filmmakers didn't get or chose to ignore. Spider-Man is not just a victim of science like the Hulk, or nature like the mutant X-Men. He enters stage two by being a super scientist, enhancing his abilities gained in stage one. Now, this is pretty clear in the Spider-Man origin and could be accepted I believe as planned. Stage three Spider-Man occurs much later and more synchronistically.

The top level of hallucinatory narcotic that William Lee encounters in Interzone, the cream of the crop, is the dried meat of a species of rare, giant, black centipedes. And quite nicely the Wonderland-drug plot of Interzone Incorporated involves the gender-hiding super villain Doctor Benway.



"Spider-Man 3" featured a highly altered version of the black, alien symbiote-costume storyline from the Spider-Man titles started in 1984. Of course there was no way they could have literally adapted the symbiote saga.


Art by Mike Zeck

In the comics, Spider-Man came across the alien costume while engaged in the "Secret Wars". "Secret Wars" involved a god-like being called the Beyonder, a god greater then Galactus and distinct from Eternity, who created a "Battleworld" and summoned numerous Marvel Super Heroes and Villains to fight a war for him to study. The prize offered the winners were their ultimate desires. The Beyonder was later revealed to be a Cosmic Cube by Steve Englehart in the "Fantastic Four". On the Battleworld, Spidey was out of web-fluid and his costume was badly damaged. He found the symbiote which handled both concerns as it generated its own, even better webs, now inexhaustible. The costume further enhanced all of Spider-Man's powers. However, at this important stage Spider-Man's intuition failed him as the symbiote was eventually revealed to be a sentient, parasitic entity. Perhaps this is why Spider-Man has never been the same since. The symbiote went on to become the monster-movie, fluidy Venom and other boring extrapolations.

Interesting though that Venom/Eddie Brock was played by Topher Grace, Eric Foreman from "That '70s Show", a sitcom that incorporated regular drug use in "the circle". Eric's father Red was played by Kurtwood Smith. Smith participated in the very violent initiation of Robocop in the 1987 film. Robocop was played by Peter Weller.

Spider-Sense is of course a psychic premonition of imminent danger, a higher state of consciousness by anyone's definition. One of the things they got wrong in the Spider-Man movies was the Spider-Sense. I found this to be especially so in number 3 where Spider-Man is constantly getting hit from behind. If nothing else Spider-Sense was specifically designed to prevent getting hit from behind. Anyway, they got a lot right in the Spider-Man movies. The costume works brilliantly. The casting is great for the most part, especially Tobey Maguire, and the villains. And I believe that's J. Jonah Jameson playing himself, I really do. As Mary Jane Kirsten Dunst is perhaps a bit bland. And unless they're planning to do something with it in a number four, they included the character of Gwen Stacy for no real reason. But casting Bryce Dallas Howard in the role has the very cool effect of making sacrificial Gwen no less then Story Incarnate. This is a point probably worth a long-ass article all its own.

Beyond the easy correspondence between Spider-Sense and the transcendental state achieved in 'Naked Lunch' from consuming alien ejaculation, there is also an interesting relationship between Spider-Man, drugs and hallucinatory experiences. Does the fact that his girlfriend/wife's name is Mary Jane even need mentioning?


Art by Steve Ditko

This is Spider-Man during his first encounter with Doctor Strange, which is almost always a "Through the Looking Glass" experience of one kind or another. I love this panel, from 1965's 'The Amazing Spider-Man King Size Annual" #2. These kinds of things were bound to happen when hanging out with illuminated Greenwich Village occultists in the mid-sixties.

In 1970 Spider-Man even helped alter the Comics Code regulations regarding the depiction of drugs. The Nixon administration apparently requested Marvel feature an anti-drug storyline in one of their comic titles. Lee chose "Amazing Spider-Man" #s 96-98, May-July of 1971. In the story Peter's friend, the son of the Green Goblin, gets hooked on pills. The Comics Code refused to approve the storyline so Marvel ran the issues without the seal. The success and merit of the issues led to the Comics Code revising their regulations. Or so the story goes.

As said, casting Willem Defoe as the Green Goblin was perfect, but as others have noticed, the dumb-looking costume of the movie was as much a failure as Spidey's was a success.



I suppose it is a bit Mugwumpy, which somehow makes sense in proximity to an actor who was both Jesus and Max Shreck, but Defoe's real face is far scarier then that helmet. This is a hell of a lot more scary.


"Maximum Overdrive". I'm the only one who likes this movie.

Spider-Man also drugs his villains a lot. Many super heroes do it, some of them full time. They're a bit like fascists in that way. Because Spidey has chemistry skills and frequently fights creeps more powerful then him he has to do something to stop them or slow them down. Here he takes out the Templar emblemed, vengeance seeking Frank Castle, the Punisher, with a cocktail he whipped up.


Art by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson

And he works a Ceres reference in to boot. And of course as a super hero Spider-Man gets drugged, gassed, or otherwise whammied into a hallucinatory state like twice a month. Drugging Spider-Man is sole purpose of existence for my favorite Spider-Man villain, Mysterio.


Art by Steve Ditko

Here we see the hallucinatory attack enacted by the Green Goblin from the spectacular "Spectacular Spider-Man" #2.


Art by John Romita

Note that it is Spider-Man's will, his great power, which is Intuition, which enables him to break the spell of the psychadelic pumpkin-bomb. I'm happy to note that Spider-Man ultimately defeats the Green Goblin in this storyline by exposing him to his own psychotropic agents. Like Batman and the Scarecrow in "Batman Begins".

Now to mythology. It is very interesting to note that Spider-Man is a goddess resonating figure and an interesting one at that. We should not at this point be at all alarmed to find the Goddess incarnate as a masculine character, especially given all of the alchemical nods in the Spider-Man story. Indeed a feminine spider super-ejaculator is a hermaphroditic metaphor of profundity. The Spider is almost always feminine in nature, from Shelob to Charlotte. And this is the case in Greek mythology as well in the form of Arachne. Arachne was a great weaver who boasted at being better at it then Athena. This led to a disguised Athena and Arachne entering a weaving contest. Arachne's work was flawless, but as it depicted transgressions of the gods, highly disrespectful. Arachne hung herself in shame. Athena took pity and turned the noose into the spider's web. With great power comes great responsibility. This of course connects the symbol of the feminine spider to the important Goddess metaphor of weaving Fate. Note the application of this legend to Kafka's "Metamorphosis" as well.


Diego Velázquez, "The Fable of Arachne", c. 1644-48

In "The Mystery of the Cathedrals" Fulcanelli wonderful illustrates the connection between Arachne and the important Mystery School initiatory figure of Ariadne via the spoken Cabala. Ariadne was a bride of Dionysus. When Dionysus descended to the Underworld he rescued Ariadne and his mother Semele and brought them to Olympus, a resurrection allegory of highest importance in Dionysian and Eleusian Rites. It was also the magic thread of Ariadne that enabled Theseus to navigate the Minotaur's labyrinth, a major initiation emblem and a symbol of the Great Work of Alchemy.


Artist unknown

I haven't read Spider-Man in years, not since the days when Todd MacFarlane started making Mary Jane's hair a third main cast member. But I heard recently that Marvel decided to undo a number of their fumbles with the franchise in a decidedly dark manner if you ask me. To do away with mistakes like the marriage to Mary Jane, the death of Aunt May and added spider-powers including organic webs like the movies, they wrote a story in which Peter and Mary Jane make a deal with Mephisto, who is the Devil, sacrificing the happiness of their marriage for the return of Aunt May to the living. Obvious occult symbolism at play, but, a deal with the devil as a retcon device? What level of initiation is this? Where is Peter's Intuition? It is not unlike shooting your wife in the head a second time playing William Tell in order to enter Annexia.

Doctoring Art Gotic Part IV

In this entry I'm dealing with more obscure Marvel and DC Comics Doctors and Professors in a somewhat random manner. This is really just a chunk, there's just too darn many of them. In this batch we find more full face masks hiding scarred visages, brain transplants, psychic twins, the Philosopher Stone directly and indirectly, demonic possession, the first Silver Age Marvel super hero, alchemical gender play and a very unexpected character named Marva Jane Grey. Oh, and Godzilla.
Before we start that though, here's Doctor Strange's Astrological Chart. Well I think it's interesting. I can't determine exactly who established Doctor Strange's date of birth. Maybe it was Stan Lee but my hunch is Steve Englehart who had a short but significant run on the title.



Rising Sign is in 08 Degrees Aquarius
Sun is in 25 Degrees Scorpio.
Moon is in 03 Degrees Scorpio.
Mercury is in 02 Degrees Sagittarius.
Venus is in 02 Degrees Sagittarius.
Mars is in 11 Degrees Leo.
Jupiter is in 20 Degrees Cancer.
Saturn is in 08 Degrees Capricorn.
Uranus is in 11 Degrees Aries.
Neptune is in 05 Degrees Virgo.
Pluto is in 20 Degrees Cancer.
N. Node is in 23 Degrees Aries.

So was this purposeful? I'm certain that making Doctor Strange a Scorpio was. Scorpio is the sign governing the occult. Though it may be accidental it is interesting that his Moon is also in Scorpio and that his Rising Sign is Aquarius.

When it comes to super hero comic book Doctor characters with esoteric significance it does not get much more blatant then the Silver Age Flash Rogue Doctor Alchemy, created by writer John Broome and illustrator Carmine Infantino. He first appeared as Mister Element in "Showcase" #13, March 1958. By his second appearance in issue #14 he had somehow made or gained possession of the Philosopher's Stone and changed his identity to Doctor Alchemy.


Art by Mike Vosburg

Albert Desmond was described as having a multiple personality disorder, like the Batman villain Two Face, one a normal law abiding citizen and the other a grandiose, amoral super villain. This makes Doctor Alchemy another example of an Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy figure as well as symbolically representing Mercury's periodic retrograde action. The identity issues are compounded for Albert Desmond. While in criminal mode he was prone to act as either of his identities, Doctor Alchemy or Mister Element. At one point the shift from mild-mannered Albert Desmond to Mister Element was induced through hypnosis by the Reverse Flash, Professor Zoom. It was discovered that the fluctuating personalities were being caused by the pulsations of a distant star called the Dragon's Eye, giving the character a very overt astrological connotation. At a later point it was revealed that Albert Desmond had a "psychic twin", a man who by chance was born at the exact same moment as Albert and was coincidentally named Alvin Desmond. The Gemini referential Twin symbol is a major esoteric element.

Inherently evil, Alvin Desmond felt his sinister urges wane during the periods of time when Albert Desmond was operating as Mister Element or Doctor Alchemy. When with the Flash's help Albert finally shed himself of his evil side, the sociopathic traits fully returned to Alvin. Through the psychic connection Alvin was able to locate the Philosophers Stone and became a new Doctor Alchemy.

The DC Comics' version of the Philosophers Stone is highly powerful, capable of transmuting any element into another, and in complex combinations. For example, at one time Doctor Alchemy was able to instantly transform all the elements composing the body of the Flash into water vapor (he got better).


Art by Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko. Cool.

It is commonly presented that the Fantastic Four were the first Marvel super heroes of the Silver Age. In fact that honor belongs to yet another mystical Doctor, the character that would come to be known as Doctor Druid. In June of 1961, nearly half a year before the first issue of "The Fantastic Four", a Lee and Kirby character called Doctor Droom was introduced in "Amazing Adventures" #1. It is understandable that Druid/Droom is often overlooked. The character disappeared after six issues when the title was reformatted as "Amazing Adult Fantasy" and he did not resurface again until the '70s in the pages of "The Incredible Hulk". At that point the obscure Doctor Droom was rechristened Doctor Druid in order to avoid confusion with Doctor Doom.


Art by Al Milgrom. The costume says it all.

Doctor Anthony Ludgate Druid (Lud = Light) was a psychiatrist and occult expert who was summoned by a Tibetan lama who had traveled to the United States seeking medical treatment. The lama put Druid through a spiritual test to ascertain his worthiness, and finding him so, untapped the potentials of his mind and trained him in mystic arts. Druid possessed telepathy and a degree of magical power with his primary ability being hypnosis and other feats of mesmerism. He was also described as being a descendant of the legendary Irish bard Amergin. Despite his place in the Marvel history books, Doctor Druid has been treated rather shabbily. He did serve as an Avenger for a short time in the mid-eighties, but he was mind controlled by Ravonna, at the time impersonating Nebula. When Ravonna was cast into Marvel's multi-functional Limbo Doctor Druid followed her (a rather tongue-in-cheek exit for the character). He later returned and headed a new group of Defenders, but was again brainwashed, this time by a demon called Slorioth. Druid went insane and was eventually killed by Daimon Hellstrom, the Son of Satan. He's still dead.

Professor Power first appeared in "Marvel Team-Up" #117, May 1982. Created by writer J. M. DeMatteis and illustrator Herb Trimbe, Anthony Power was a prominent historian, university professor and an adviser to four Presidents. Ultra-patriotic, Power was devastated when his son Matthew returned from Vietnam virtually brain dead. Power had an epiphany, deciding that the cure for America's social ills was for the nation to be ruled by by a single, worthy individual. He organized an underground network of like-minded individuals who funded Power's elaborate, high-tech plot. He further hired former agents of the CIA, FBI, SHIELD, and AIM to serve as his private army, arming them with lasers and flying chariots and dressing them like ancient Roman soldiers (making his organization very similar to the Golden Age Doctor Light's Roman criminal underground). In his first appearance Professor Power abducted and tested his soldiers and equipment against the Mugwump Spider-Man and the Dionysian Wolverine (see Mystos Mustela).


Art by Herb Trimpe.

In issue #118 Professor Power was the villain in a team-up of Spider-Man and Professor X. A few months later, in a Marvel Team-Up between Spider-Man and the blue ape-man Beast, Professor Power clad his brain-dead son in a super suit of high-tech armor and transposed his own mind into his son's body, making him a very strange gestalt entity. Speaking of gestalts, I find the symbolic potential of team-up titles like "Marvel Team-Up", "Marvel Two-In-One", "DC Comics Presents", certain runs of "The Brave and the Bold" and even the singular teaming of Superman/Batman in "World's Finest" to have great symbolic potentials.


Art by Kerry Gammill

When it comes to mythological resonance and sheer weirdness underlying symbolism, Wonder Woman is in a league of her own. Towards the end of the sixties Wonder Woman went through a "mod" period. Phase shift is not something that should be unexpected in a lunar goddess character named Diana. Wonder Woman revoked her godly powers and gained a spiritual martial arts mentor by the name of I Ching. The Wonder Woman adventures of this era were more espionage-adventure oriented, channeling elements of shows like "The Avengers" and the James Bond films. It was during this period, in "Wonder Woman" #179, November 1968 , that the super villain Doctor Cyber was introduced.


Art by Mike Sekowsky

Created by Sekowsky with writer Dennis O'Neil, Doctor Cyber is the head of a SPECTER-like international crime cartel. Amongst their crimes was an attack on I Ching's monastery. During a plot involving an earth-quake making device as a means to blackmail the world, Doctor Cyber was severely disfigured by an urn of hot coals, which she naturally blamed on Wonder Woman. In a later storyline Wonder Woman and detective Jonny Double investigated an organization called The Tribunal, which was revealed as a cover for a scheme by Cyber to find a suitable woman into whom she could have her brain transplanted. In the course of this story she attempted to have the procedure performed on Wonder Woman with the assistance of the Batman criminal brain surgeon Doctor Moon (created by O'Neal and artist Irv Novick and first appearing in "Batman" #240, March 1972). I find the alchemical/astronomical connotations underlying this plot line, including the use of Jonny Double and Doctor Moon, to be quite obvious. As a super scientific international crime cartel ring leader Doctor Cyber has access to all the typical paraphernalia, from rocket sleds to mind control serum.


Art by Harry G. Peter

Another female comic book Doctor is the Wonder Woman villain Doctor Poison. First appearing in February 1942's "Sensation Comics" #2, Doctor Poison was the product of Wonder Woman creator Doctor William Moulton Marston (who was as strange as any of his characters) and illustrator Harry G. Peter. The alchemical connotations of evil chemist Doctor Poison are apparent on a surface level. She was introduced as an Axis spy in charge of the "Nazi Poison Division" with a plot to contaminate the U.S. Army's water supply with the chemical Reverso, which would cause the soldiers to do the opposite of what they were ordered. In 1943 she reemerged as the "Chemical Research Chief" of Japan. Dr. Poison's hood and mask hides not just her identity but her gender as well. It was eventually revealed that she was the beautiful Japanese Princess Maru. At one point Dr. Poison was sent to the Amazon penal colony Transformation Island, but it didn't take. She escaped and in 1948 teamed with seven other female villains to form Villainy Inc. in "Wonder Woman" #28.


Art by Harry G. Peter

What a wonderful team, a former gorilla turned giantess, an Atlantean Queen, a Snow Man, Dr. Poison, a hypnotic magician of the "Blue Ray", a Priestess of the "Crimson Flame" and the Dionysian split-personality sufferer Cheetah. The leader, unidentified in this panel, is Eviless, a slaver from (naturally) the planet Saturn. Including Dr. Poison, three members of the team were women disguised as men.


Art by Harry G. Peter

Sticking with Golden Age Wonder Woman, Marston and Peter, we have the telepathic dwarf Doctor Psycho who first appeared in "Wonder Woman" #5, July 1943. Psycho was presented as a sociopathic, misogynistic con-artist occultist. He is originally employed by The Duke of Deception.


Art by Harry G. Peter

The Duke was a minion of the war god Mars. Mars blamed women for preventing the world from completely engulfing in endless warfare (this was during World War II). Doctor Psycho was wrongly convicted of a robbery due to the testimony of his former fiancee, Marva Jane Gray. This led to him developing a psychopathic hatred of all women. After his release Psycho tortured and brainwashed Marva and utilized her as his guinea pig for occult experiments. He discovered he could use Marva to produce "ectoplasm" which Psycho could mentally shape. In a plot to remove women from the war effort Psycho generated a false spirit of George Washington as part of a highly bizarre smear campaign.

In Part One of this series I discussed Doctor Who's connection to the Marvel Universe and the company's propensity at one time to include licensed properties they published titles about within the confines of their super hero reality. This was the case with Marvel's late seventies series "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" which ran for 24 issues. During this run Godzilla encountered the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, and Spider-Man. There was even a branch of SHIELD developed specifically to deal with Godzilla. Apparently a "mutated" version (due to the licensing agreement long expiring) of the monster appeared in a Marvel publication as recently as last year. As with Doctor Who, characters that started in the Godzilla series had further lives beyond the parent title including the manga-inspired giant robot Red Ronin and the super villain Doctor Demonicus.


Art by Tom Christopher

Obviously influenced by Doctor Doom, Doctor Demonicus, with his Toho monster movie trappings, is also very similar to Doctor Cyber. He was introduced in "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" #4, November 1977 as a doctor specializing in genetic engineering, Douglas Birley purposefully exposed himself to radiation in an attempt to induce mutation and generate super powers. It didn't work, instead giving him severe skin cancer, a condition he controled with his costume, naturally. He later acquired a radioactive meteor called "the Lifestone" that he utilized to transform animals into giant monsters. He crafted the Lifestone into a transport as a mobile power source for his creations. While Godzilla fought the monsters SHIELD agent Gabriel Jones subdued Doctor Demonicus.

Later Demonicus worked with the alien sorceror Maur-Kan against another Marvel licensed property, the Shogun Warriors. Years later he showed up in "West Coast Avengers" where he created his own volcanic island which he named Demonica and won UN membership. During this time he was under the control of a demon called Raksasa, named for demons from Hindu mythology.