Sir James Bond, 007 (Emeritus.)

M. :

They used to say, 

A Good Spy is A Pure Spy, 

Inside and Out. 

Roses, Tanagra figurines 

and Debussy —

He plays Debussy every afternoon 

from sunset until it's too dark 

to read the music. 

Stands on his head a lot, 

eats Royal Jelly. 

Lets his intestines down 

and washes them by hand…. 

Something he learned during 

his sojourn in Tibet. 

Ransome, CIA :

M, what gives? 

M. :

I forgot to mention 

The Lions.

Ransome, CIA :

Lions and more lions.

We're surrounded by Lions!

Smernov, KGB :

I did not come all the way here 

to be devoured by 

Symbols of Monarchy! 

Ransome, CIA :

I warn you, M, if 

This is A Trap... 

M. :

Calm yourselves, gentlemen. 

It's no Trap, I assure you. 

The Lions are only curious —

He has few visitors. 

Ransome, CIA :

That I can believe….

M. :

A veritable Eden, 

is it not, gentlemen? 

Ransome, CIA :

Eden without an Eve 

is an absurdity. 

Smernov, KGB :

A Good Spy is a Pure Spy. 

M. :

Not Good. Great. 

The Greatest Spy in History, gentlemen. 

The True, One and Only, 

Original James Bond.

LOYAL RETAINER :

The Gentlemen are here, 

Sir James.

Sir James Bond :

Thank you.

M. :

My Dear Bond.

Sir James Bond :

My Dear M. 

Ransome, CIA :

Ransome, CIA, Sir James —

Sir James Bond :

J-Junior cipher c-clerk 

in m-my day, weren't you, 

Ransome? 

Ransome, CIA :

Yes, sir. JCC, class G, 

SIC to SCCT. 

CIA, Washington DC. 

Smernov, KGB :

Smernov, KGB, 

Sir James. 

Sir James Bond :

Ah, yes. L-Labour camp inspector. 

Ikon GPU, Siberian sector. 

I remember Your ch-Chap Lenin very well :

First-class organiser,

Second-class mind. 

Le Grand, 

Deuxième-Bureau :

Le Grand, Sir James. 

Deuxième-Bureau. 

Sir James Bond :

Promoted at last from 

The Vice Detail? 

M. :

How incredibly well you look, James. 

Sir James Bond :

Time, My Dear M, 

Does Not Exist 

within These Walls.

Ransome, CIA :

…..they ain't for Real.

M. :

Yes, a far cry from 

our embattled world. 

Sir James Bond :

In My Day, Spying was 

an alternative to War. 

The Spy was a member of a select and immaculate priesthood, vocationally d-devoted, sublimely disinterested. 

Hardly a description of that sexual acrobat who leaves a t-trail of beautiful dead women like blown roses behind him.

M. :

You mean...

Sir James Bond :

You know very well who I mean.

 That b-bounder to whom 

you gave My Name 

and Number —

M. :

My Dear James, 

when you left us 

we were a small service, 

under-financed, 

ludicrously ill-equipped. 

It was essential that 

Your Legend be maintained —

Without a James Bond : 007, 

No-one would have respected us. 

Sir James Bond :

Him and his wretched g-gadgets. 

M. :

We must make use of the 

weapons of our time. 

Sir James Bond :

So I observe. 

You, Ransome, with your 

trick carnation that 

s-spits cyanide. 

You ought to be ashamed. 

Ransome, CIA :

…..The Russians started it. 

Sir James Bond :

And you, Smernov, 

with an armoury concealed 

in your grotesque boots. 

Listen to them tinkle. 

And you, Le Grand, with 

a different deadly poison 

in each of your fly buttons. 

And you, M, with your 

flame-throwing 

fountain pens —

Y-Y-You're joke-shop 

spies, gentlemen. 

M. :

We are in the last half of 

the 20th century, Sir James —

Even you have to face it. 

Sir James Bond :

Why should I, when I can 

face that? Look, at My Garden :

Out There, there is A Black Rose —

Not Dark Red, but Black. 

As a Raven's Wing at Midnight. 

I would not exchange one single petal 

for anything Your World has to offer, including 

an Aston M-Martin 

with lethal accessories. 

Smernov, KGB :

You have only contempt for 

the proletariat, Sir James. 

This we know. 

Ransome, CIA :

If I didn't know better, 

I'd say you'd lost your 

Faith in Democracy. 

Sir James Bond :

You can Break The Glass, 

but you can't hold back 

The Weather. 

M. :

Things are Bad. 

I've lost agents in the last fortnight - 

seven killed, four missing.

Sir James Bond :

Is My Namesake among them? 

M. :

He may well be tomorrow. 

Eight of ours were given The Works — 

Two in The Pentagon.

Smernov, KGB :

KGB is depleted. 

….I cannot disclose exact figures. 

M. :

The Enemy has penetrated our most secret inner circles.

He reads Our Very Mind.

For all we know, 

He has his eye on us right now. 

Sir James Bond :

Are you quite sure he is not 

one or m-more of you? 

Ransome, CIA :

No, no.

Le Grand, 

Deuxième-Bureau :

Absolutely sure. 

Smernov, KGB :

Until This Danger is passed, 

we must stand united 

in the defence of all spies, 

great or small, 

regardless of nationality. 

Sir James Bond :

Calamity makes strange b-bedfellows, 

but why, in the strength 

of Your Unity, do you disturb 

A Gentleman in his Retirement? 

M. :

We need 

Your Inspirational Leadership. 

Le Grand, 

Deuxième-Bureau :

Please give us 

The Benefit of 

Your Incomparable 

Powers of Deduction.

Ransome, CIA :

For all Freedom-Loving Peoples —

For the glorious Socialist Revolution. 

(Date T.B.C,)

Sir James Bond :

If I may interrupt 

this flow of clichés, 

it is now that time of day 

I have set apart for Debussy…

Can this be The Man Who Won 

a Victoria Cross at Mafeking? 

The Hero of the Ashanti Uprising? 

Smernov, KGB :

What genius to be wasted 

in The Service of 

a crumbling Empire….

Ransome, CIA :

Why, at the height of his powers, 

did Bond decide to retire? 

M. :

Mata Hari, My Dear Friend.

Ransome, CIA :

What's the connection?

M. :

The Woman in His Life.

Ransome, CIA :

I don't get it.

M. :

It was his painful duty 

to lure her across 

the Spanish frontier into France, 

where we stood her 

in front of a firing squad. 

He really loved 

that woman. 

Well, James? 

Sir James Bond :

I'm sorry, old man, 

but what you ask is 

quite impossible. 

M. :

Perhaps this will change 

Your Decision. 

( M. hands over a Warrant bound with The Royal Seal. )

Sir James Bond :

My Record speaks My Loyalty. 

But no, not even 

for her, McTarry. 

M. :

Sorry, James. 

( M. lights his cigar. )

There's McTarry's signal. 

Stand by. 

Zero. 

On. 

Fire! 

Fire! Up !

The Authority —

A MAN IN BLACK :

Authority to Control.

Control —

PUSSY :

Go ahead. 

The Authority —

The MAN in BLACK :

Proceed with Smersh Plan B —

Sir James Bond is back, 

with his morals, his vows, 

and his celibate image. 

We must destroy that image. 

Riverbank to Control.

Control —

PUSSY :

Go ahead.

The Target has just entered Scotland.

M's Castle to Control.

Control — PUSSY 

M's name is ‘McTarry’. Use it. 

Plan B in operation :

McTarry Castle completely occupied, with only one change —

Agent Mimi is now M's Widow. 

Control — PUSSY :

Agent Mimi impersonating 

Lady Fiona? 

Well, she has the best Scots accent.

Fascist Nursing

It Happened Here (1964) 

Pauline Murray, Sebastian Shaw

Honour :

There you are.

Well, it's good to see you,

but you might've let me know.

Pauline Murray :

You can't imagine the trouble I've had

keeping this billet for you.

The landlady's been nearly frantic

trying to get other people in here.

Honour :

You might've phoned or something,

the number's on the card.

Pauline Murray :

Honour, have you got anything to drink?

Honour :

Are you feeling all right?

Pauline Murray :

Yes, I'm all right. But...

Something awful happened.

After you'd left. After you'd got away.

We went back to the house

and there were partisans in it.

I think all the others are dead.

I think I'm the only one that got away.

It's just all rather frightful.

Why have they still got this stuff on the window?

Surely the planes can't get through as far as this?

Honour :

Air raid precautions. 

Just in case.

Pauline Murray :

Thanks, Honor.

This is real coffee. I haven't tasted 

anything like this for ages.

Honour :

I got it on my ration card this morning.

I got a job at the food office right away.

Of course they're crying out for nurses, really.

I thought I might join this

'Immediate Action' Organisation,

you remember I did those courses at the WI.

But they really want properly trained nurses, like you.

Pauline Murray :

I'm not getting involved with any organisation.

I'm just going to do district nursing again,

the same as I did at home.

Do they have districts down here,

or is it all controlled from hospital?

Honour :

I don't really know.

But this organisation sounds the thing.

Pauline Murray :

Yes, but it's probably political.

And I'm not going to become involved

in any political organisation.

Honour, when Dick was killed, I felt I wanted

to slaughter every German I saw on sight.

But now I feel all we've got to do

is try and get back to normal.

Honour :

Well, I must go and get my identity cards.

I'll take you over to the Labour Centre.

Pauline Murray :

Sorry, Honour.

I've had it, I couldn't move.

Honour :

Well, you could go tomorrow,

I suppose, but you'll be a day late.

Don't blame me if you get into hot water.

And that's my bed.

Officer Presence

Sergeant MacDonald will continue

with the training discussion

on Officer Safety. Sergeant?

Sgt. MacDonald :

We've been talking about

Patrol Bureau Memorandum 39.

Like it says, an officer gets into

many different kinds of 

emotionally charged situations.

The best guarantee 

any of you have

that such a situation 

won't get out of hand is 

"Officer Presence."

In simple English, that means...

...remember, when you're 

up against a criminal,

if YOU believe that 

You're a Better Man than he is,

he'll believe it, too.

Any questions?

All right, fall in for inspection.

Reed :

I guess there is more to Officer Presence than just being there.

Does that mean, you got more Presence if you're as big as Baldwin?

Mallory :

That's not Presence, that's lard.

I had a partner once that had the best appearance of anybody I ever saw.

Reed :

Is that right?

How was his Presence?

Mallory :

Absent.

Reed :

Malloy?

Mallory :

Yeah?

Reed :

About that Officer Presence business, does it really work?

Mallory :

It depends.

Reed :

On what?

On whether you really understand how to use it.

Reed :

The Trouble is, I don't think 

I DO understand.

Mallory :

What?

Reed :

How to use it.

Mallory :

Well, why didn't you ask some questions 

back at roll call?

Reed :

I don't know. 

I guess I was just afraid of 

sounding stupid back there.

You know, in front of 

the whole watch.

Mallory :

Besides, you figured you could always ask me.

Reed :

You're My Partner. 

It's supposed to be part of your job.

Mallory :

Okay, ask.

Reed :

I'd like to know how you impose Your Presence 

other than by, well, just being there.

Mallory :

You let people know 

Who You Are, 

What You Represent.

Mostly, its The Way You 

Talk to 'em.

Reed :

You really think that does it, huh?

Mallory :

Usually. Unless your voice cracks in the middle.

Reed :

Malloy?

Mallory :

Yeah?

Reed :

Just one thing, did you know

your gun was empty?

Mallory :

Yeah, I knew it.

Trouble was if I'd stopped to reload, 

I could've wound up dead.

[police radio chattering]

Reed :

You know that stuff The Sergeant was

talking about today, 

Officer Presence?

I guess I just got The Message.

An Anarchy of Faith

“….Anarchy is The ONE state of affairs which  the masses 

will not tolerate for LONG….”

— JFC Fuller

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: We want to think about God. God is a thought, God is an idea, but its reference is to something that transcends all thinking. I mean, he’s beyond being, beyond the category of being or nonbeing. Is he or is he not? Neither is nor is not.

Every god, every mythology, every religion, is True in this sense: 

it is true as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.

He who thinks he knows doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows.

There is an old story that is still good — the story of the quest, the spiritual quest, that is to say, to find the inward thing that you basically are. All of these symbols in mythology refer to you — have you been reborn? Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation? You are God in your deepest identity. You are one with the transcendent.

BILL MOYERS: The images of God are many. Joseph Campbell called them “the masks of eternity,” and said they both cover and reveal the face of glory. All our names and images for God are masks, Campbell said, they signify that ultimate reality, which by definition transcends language and art.

A myth is a mask of God, too, a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world. As teacher, scholar and writer, Joseph Campbell spent his life in the study of comparative religion. He wanted to know what it means that God assumes such different masks in different cultures. We go east of Suez and see people dancing before a bewildering array of fantastic gods. When those people come here, well, Campbell told the story of the young Hindu who called on him in New York and said, “When I visit a foreign country, I like to acquaint myself with its religion. So I bought myself a Bible and for some months now have been reading it from the beginning. But, you know, I can’t find any religion in it.”

Campbell, who became president of the American Society for the Study or Religion, was at home in the sacred scriptures of all the world’s great faiths. He found comparable stories in them: stories of creation, of virgin births, incarnations, death and resurrection, second comings, judgment days. Quoting one of his favorite Hindu scriptures which he translated from the Sanskrit, he concluded that “truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names.”

Joseph Campbell began his journey into this literature of the spirit after his imagination was excited by a visit to the Museum of Natural History in New York when he was just a boy. We met there a few months before his death and talked through a long evening, about the masks or eternity.

Is there something in common in every culture that creates this need for God?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I think anyone who has an experience of mystery and awe knows that there is a dimension, let’s say, or the universe that is not that which is available to his senses. There’s a wonderful saying in one of the Upanishads, “When, before a sunset or a mountain and the beauty of this or that, you pause and say, ‘Ah, that is participation in divinity.'” And I think that’s what it is, it’s the realization of wonder. And also the experience of tremendous power, which people of course living in the world of nature are experiencing all the time. You know there’s something there that’s much bigger than the human dimension.

And our way of thinking in The West largely is that God is the source of the energy. 

The way in most Oriental thinking, and I think in most of what we call ‘primitive’ thinking, also, is that God is the manifestation of the energy, not its source, that God is the vehicle of the energy. 

And the level of energy that is involved or represented determines the character of the god. 

There are gods of violence, there are gods of compassion, there are gods that unite the two, there are gods that are the protectors of kings in their war campaigns. 

These are personifications of the energy that’s in play, and what the source of the energy is. What’s the source of the energy in these lights around us? I mean, this is a total mystery.

BILL MOYERS: Doesn’t this make of faith an anarchy, a sort of continuing war among principalities?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: As Life is, yes. 

I mean, even in your mind, when it comes to doing anything, there will be a war : A decision as to priorities, what should you do now?

Or, in relationship to other people, there will be four or five possibilities of my way of action. 

And the notion of divinity or divine life in my mind would be what would determine my decision. 

If it were rather crude, it would be a rather crude decision.

BILL MOYERS: 

But is Divinity just 

What We Think?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes.

BILL MOYERS: What does that do to faith?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it’s a tough one about faith.

BILL MOYERS: You are a man of faith-

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I’m not…

BILL MOYERS: You’re a man of wonder and…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, I don’t have to have faith, I have experience.

BILL MOYERS: What kind of experience?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I’ve experience of the wonder, of the life, I have experience of love, I have experience of hatred, malice — I’d like to punch the guy’s jaw, and I admit this. But those are different divinities, I mean, from the point of view of a symbolic imaging. Those are different images operating in me.

For instance, when I was a little boy and was being brought up a Roman Catholic, I was told I had a guardian angel on my right side and a tempting devil on my left, and when it came to making a decision of what I would do, the decision would depend on which one had most influence on me. And I must say that in my boyhood, and I think also in the people who were teaching me, they actually concretized those thoughts.

BILL MOYERS: They did what?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It was an angel. That angel is a fact and the devil is a fact, do you see; otherwise, one thinks of them as metaphors for the energies that are afflicting and guiding you.

BILL MOYERS: And those energies come from?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: From your own life. The energy of your own body, the different organs in your body, including your head, are the conflict systems.

BILL MOYERS: And your life comes from where?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, there you are. From the ultimate energy that’s the life of the universe. And then you say, well, somebody has to generate that. Why do you have to say that? Why can’t it be impersonal? That would be Brahman, that would be the transcendent mystery, that you can also personify.

BILL MOYERS: Can men and women live with an impersonality?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes, they do all over the place. Just go east of Suez. In the East, the gods are much more elemental.

BILL MOYERS: Elemental?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Elemental, less human and more like the powers of nature. I see a deity as representing an energy system, and part of the energy system is the human energy systems of love and malice, hate, benevolence, compassion. And in Oriental thinking, the god is the vehicle of the energy, not its source.

BILL MOYERS: Well, of course the heart of the Christian faith is that these elemental forces you’re talking about embodied themselves in a human being in reconciling mankind to God.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. And the basic Buddhist idea is that that is true of you, as well, and that what Jesus was a person who realized that in himself, and lived out of the Christhood of his nature.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think about Jesus?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: We just don’t, know about Jesus. All we know are four contradictory texts that tell us what he did.

BILL MOYERS: Written many years after he lived.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: But I think we know what Jesus said. I think the sayings of Jesus are probably pretty close. But when you read the Thomas gospel, the Gospel According to Thomas, which was dug up there in that, with those other gnostic texts, it has all the flavor of one of the synoptics, Matthew, Mark or Luke, except that it doesn’t say quite the same thing.

There’s one wonderful passage, it’s the last one in the gospel, actually. “When will the kingdom come?” Now, in Mark 13, I think it is, we hear that the end of the world is going to come. That is to say, a mythological image, that is, the end of the world, is taken as a reference to an actual, physical, historical fact to be. When you read the Thomas gospel, Jesus says, “The kingdom of the father will not come by expectation; the kingdom of the father is spread upon the earth and men do not see it.”

So I look at you now in that sense and the radiance of the presence of the divine is known to me, through you.

BILL MOYERS: Through me?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You, sure.

BILL MOYERS: A journalist?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Jesus also says in this text, “He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be he. “He’s talking from the point of view of that being of beings which we call the Christ, who is the being of all of us. And anyone who lives in relation to that is as Christ. And anyone who incarnates, or rather brings into his life the message of the Word, is equivalent to Jesus. That’s the sense of that.

BILL MOYERS: So that’s what you mean when you say, “I am radiating God to you.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: You are, yes.

BILL MOYERS: And you to me.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And I’m speaking this seriously, yes.

BILL MOYERS: Oh, I take it seriously. I happen to believe the same as you without being able to articulate it as you do. I do sense that there is divinity. The divinity is in the other.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: So you are the vehicle, you are as it were radiant of the spirit. And that’s…why not recognize it?

BILL MOYERS: I’ll tell you what the most gripping scripture in the Christian New Testament is for me. It says, “I believe. Help thou my unbelief.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I believe in what?

BILL MOYERS: I believe in this ultimate reality, and that I can experience it, that I do experience it, but I don’t have answers to my questions. I believe in the question, Is there a God?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I had a very amusing experience, which might be well worth telling. I was in the New York Athletic Club swimming pool, and you know, you don’t wear your collar this way or that way when you’re in a swimming pool. And I was introduced to a priest, “This is Father So-and-so, this is Joseph Campbell.” I’m a professor, he’s a professor at one of our Catholic universities. So after I’d had my swim, I came and sat down beside, in what we call, you know, the horizontal athlete situation, and the priest is beside me. And he said, “Mr. Campbell, are you a priest?” I said, “No, Father.” He said, “Are you a Catholic?” I said, “I was, Father.” He said, and now he had the sense to ask it this way, “Do you believe in a personal God?” I said, “No, Father.” And he said, “Well, I suppose there is no way to prove by logic the existence of a personal God.” And I said, “If there were, Father, what would be the value of faith?” “Well, Mr. Campbell, it’s nice to have met you.” And he was off. I really felt I had done a jujitsu trick there.

But that was a very illuminating conversation to me. The fact that he asked, “Do you believe in a personal God?” that meant that he also recognized the possibility of the Brahman, of the transcendent energy.

BILL MOYERS: Well, then, what is religion?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, the word religion means religio, linking back, linking back the phenomenal person to a source. If we say it is the one life in both of us, then my separate life has been linked to the one life, religio, linked back. And this becomes symbolized in the images of religion, which represent that connecting link.

Cosmic!

Beyond ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’.

“ Even better was Starlin’s masterpiece Warlock. An acid-drenched existential journey that began with some of his best work, Warlock was another reinvention of a preexisting character, a throwaway Kirby concept given flesh and meaning by more urgent times. Warlock was an artificial Adam stepping from a cocoon created by genetic engineers, a notion Kirby left undeveloped in a half-cooked Fantastic Four story.

  Starlin conveyed all the backstory in one of his quirky opening monologues, then set the character free, wrapped now in a billowing, red-and-yellow high-collared cape—the traditional garb of the mystic superhero, you may recall. Adam Warlock was a psychedelic champion who did nothing by halves and who had chosen as his enemy not crime, injustice, or even other superheroes but the Universal Church of Truth, a monolithic star-conquering faith led by a godlike sadist known as the Magus, who just happened to be Adam Warlock’s own corrupted future self!

  In “1000 Clowns!” the ever-suffering Adam Warlock was cast adrift on a planet of clowns, all toiling on a gigantic garbage heap scattered with diamonds. The head lunatic was Len Teans, a near-anagram of Stan Lee, while the clown who painted the same smiling face on everyone he met was Jan Hatroomi, an almost anagram for John Romita, Marvel’s art director and the man who enforced the Marvel house style.

  The word cosmic came to typify these wild forays into the often drug-illuminated imagination, and there were more to come. These strange new superhero stories were created by younger writers and artists, longhairs and weirdos who were pouring into the comics industry, drawn to Marvel’s iconoclastic universe of possibilities.

  Urbane, and openly self-aware, writer Steve Englehart plunged Doctor Strange into a series of voyages to the beginning of the universe, beyond the veil of death, and the hinterlands of his own psyche. Englehart’s rush of pop philosophy came wrapped in the kind of arresting imagery that looked best when redrawn on the covers of school textbooks: floating, laughing skulls, bone horses, hooded lepers clanging handbells in dismal, postmortem cities. Unlike Starlin, who wrote and drew his own stories, Englehart worked with a series of talented artistic collaborators to bring a new twist to the superhero landscape. He took Roy Thomas’s fascination with continuity to new levels of jaw-dropping ingenuity, and he had a voice that brought new life to old characters, along with a worldly nonjudgmental counterculture perspective that spoke to an older audience.

  His most accomplished collaborator on Doctor Strange was artist Frank Brunner, whose style ran Neal Adams–style naturalism through a European filter of Alphonse Mucha and Aubrey Beardsley. Brunner combined the Adams aesthetic with the decorative Art Nouveau–inspired touch that Brit artist Barry Smith was bringing to Conan the Barbarian. (Like so many of his generation, Brunner was able to profit from the growth of specialist comics and fan culture. He went into the lucrative portfolio market with one set of limited-edition, beautifully drawn illustrations depicting Lewis Carroll’s Alice wandering around Wonderland with her tits and muff out, which was indicative of where things were at that time, as childhood toys and storybook characters were suddenly sexualized.) Orthodox fans of the Ditko original, like my uncle Billy, had no time for Englehart and Brunner’s research-heavy, decadent take on Doctor Strange. Their otherworldy dimensions were easily rooted in books they’d read, or aped Gustave Doré’s nineteenth-century illustrations of the underworld, and lacked the genuine menace and eerie schizoid originality of Ditko’s visionary landscape.

  The same sense of liberation that had fueled the hedonism of the sixties and early seventies was turning kids’ comics into revolutionary tracts. Freedom. Magic. Rebellion. Even the superheroes were getting in on the act. The patriot days were behind them, and camp was over. Superheroes were Beat hipsters in search of meaning on the Great Road, wherever it led. Their enemies were blind Gnostic Archons, ossified, personified forces of restriction.

  The semiunderground hippie superheroes of Englehart, Starlin, and writer Steve Gerber had one thing in common. They could and would fight to defend what had become the Marvel house philosophy: a kind of college-liberal morality that even with a new cynical edge never lost sight of the essential ideals of heroic self-sacrifice that powered the Marvel universe. “We won’t get fooled again!” the Who had sung, playing out the end of the sixties hippie dream with a typically bitter working-class pragmatism. The gleaming silver spaceships were rusting in their hangars. For America, there was more torment, more soul-searching, and the heroes were right there suffering with the nation, on the cross, perishing beneath merciless stars.

  In cinema, the auteur era had arrived. UCLA film school graduates were bringing to Hollywood rule-breaking influences from the European cinema of the nouvelle vague. Even leading men changed, as a vogue for mournful or manic, rumpled Everyman antiheroes allowed fine but quirky actors like Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, and Dustin Hoffman to strut their stuff upon the stage as unlikely heartthrobs. In the era of the disillusioned antihero, even the “I told you so …” voice of Woody Allen could be sexy. The sixties had feminized men and made gay or dandy styles and haircuts acceptable. As women considered new social possibilities, men chameleoned wildly in response. Some tried to appear unthreatening, others tried to define a new sexuality based around wit or intelligence. The square-jawed cowboy superhero retreated beneath the mocking stings of gay men and women, and intellectuals. It was as if nature was giving everyone a chance to get laid. Even populist Hollywood was wide open to new talent, new voices with a more authentic cadence. For a few years, maybe even less, anything could happen as we watched a young art form grow up and stretch its wings.

  At Marvel, the books were going out unedited in an atmosphere of anarchy. The name on the door of Marvel’s editor in chief changed five times in 1976 as a succession of writers accepted the job and then just as swiftly pulled out. It was impossible for one mortal to supervise all of Marvel’s output, with the result that none of it was supervised. This collapse of the command structure allowed for some of the most subversive superhero stories ever to slip through the net and influence the next generation of creators. Only three years previously, Spider-Man had defied the Comics Code by responsibly tackling the menace of teenage drug taking. Now Rick Jones was tripping in the Negative Zone.

  A new current was flowing. A new polarity. Fashion was about to turn on its heels again. The flame of the interior was burning low, like the weakly sparking fused neurons of the burnouts, the acid casualties who hadn’t been able to handle the Nightside, the Negative World when it came knocking, as it always must. The new drugs were cocaine and heroin, offering escape from the visceral soul-wrenching effects of psychedelic drugs into the hard sheen of gleaming self-regard or numb self-obliteration. The impulse was to turn outward again. Like so many young seekers in the chilly, sweaty, shivering comedown mornings, superhero comics were crying out for some input from the real world before they lost touch with the concrete and the clay altogether.

  The psychedelic wave shaded into the self-indulgent, self-absorbed musical bywater known as progressive rock, or “prog.” It seems hardly surprising that music and comics were on this parallel course at the same time. These were reverberations from an original gong.

  And as if summoned by some collective invocation, a new Dark Age came on like a freight train from the shadows under a long tunnel.”