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"Where Walks...The Heretic!" March, 1999

This was my fourth Fanboy piece, and the first, I think, to show off what an frightening fuckin' nutball I am. The idea for the piece I pinched from an old R. Fiore Funnybook Roulette column (from The Comics Journal) where he parodied, with hilarious accuracy, the career arc of second-string Marvel superheroes. It was one of those ideas, so perfectly executed, that the moment I read it, I wish I had written it.

And, about a decade later, I did.

Fanboy Rampage By Jeff Lester

If there's one question I keep getting since I started doing Fanboy Rampage, it's "who are you?" Admittedly, it's not phrased quite like that. In most cases, it's "just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?" But I know what's being asked no matter how it's phrased. So I thought a brief biographical sketch would be in order...

I got into comics at a very young age. Just as you can meet the occasional Chinese acrobat sold to the Peking Opera at infancy, or hear stories of "special" children sold to the circus, so it was with I, who was sold to both Marvel and DC comics simultaneously. I don't remember much about my reception at DC; I was taken to a very quiet set of offices where I sat for a few hours until Julius Schwartz came out and gave me a lollipop (I still have a copy of the voucher I had to fill out for that lollipop, somewhere). As for Marvel, I'll never forget Stan the Man himself leading me by the hand into the bustle that was the Marvel Bullpen. His first gentle words to me were "Excelsior, True Believer! You're a true Member of Merry Marvel Marching Society now! Your pulse pounding pusillanimosity will make an agreeable addition to our sweatshop's soul-searching sagas of superheroes and their simp sidekicks! Pay your dues to get into our continuity, and you'll be even bigger than Rick Jones!"

I was merely one of the masses at first; you can see me in crowd scenes in comics of the early '70s. I still remember my first line. I sat on the shoulders of a man in a suit who smelt heavily of Bruit and Gitane cigarettes and said, "Daddy, why is Superman crying?" Afterwards, the man patted me on the head and walked off. I hear he later found regular work as the lead in some long running Euro-gangster comic. Good for him. He certainly smelled the part.

It was an easy life. You stood and pointed to the sky and said what you were told to say. It was usually either "Spider-Man! But--I heard he was an outlaw!" for Marvel or "Look out! It's headed straight for us!" for DC. I also helped out behind the scenes and used to stand on a ladder to adjust Giant-Man's truss, who had really messed up his back doing some Kirby-drawn cover. Over at DC, I got sandwiches for Carmine Infantino, who used to eat them in front of starving freelancers to get them to work faster. I auditioned all the time, getting closer and closer to breaking in. I nearly got the role of Gabby for Kirby's revival of the Boy Commandos, but my fingers weren't square enough. At Marvel, I almost got the role of the new Bucky after Rick Jones left to star in Captain Marvel but they decided to create the Falcon instead. (Jones, Marvel's most famous nonpowered hero, was a mess, disappearing to Europe for months at a time and supposedly nursing the granddaddy of all airplane glue addictions, which is why he never stayed on one title for too long. At a party years later, Jones told me that he had been so wasted for his first issue of Captain Marvel that he kept yelling "Shazam!" at inappropriate times. "I didn't know where the hell I was, what with the name Captain Marvel and everything," he told me, "I thought I had been traded to DC for Billy Batson.")

Finally, I got my big break: I got the role of "Twisty" for Joe Simon's FreakForce Five. A companion book to Brother Power the Geek, the FreakForce Five was a group of superpowered hippy kids (Twisty, Tweaky, Trippy, Turkey and Lady Shortshorts) who fought crime and "The Man." I remember Joe Simon telling me with all sincerity, "You kids are going to be bigger than Prez!" (Although he didn't realize at the time just how easy it would be to be bigger than Prez, Simon was still wrong. We were cancelled after only one issue. The FreakForce Five's rogue gallery boasts only one villain, The Keep On Trucker, who later found work as Razorback, Marvel's truck-driving CB superhero.)

Fortunately for me, Marvel was entering its '70s horror stage and, after seeing the long lines in front of The Exorcist, Stan ordered up a monthly book about a child possessed by the devil. I was essentially handpicked to play "The Heretic!" It was originally supposed to be "The Antichrist" but Marvel thought that they would have trouble getting the book on newsstands in the South. I didn't care. As far as I was concerned, once I was an established character, I would have it made. No more crowd scenes, no more flashback sequences, no more silly errands like having to carefully toss the room looking for The Atom, a huge ether hound who would shrink to tiny size to heighten the buzz and then pass out under a phone or something. Comic book continuity was a wonderful thing, and I couldn't wait to officially become a part of it.

My first indication of what I was in for came when Stan and the editor (Marv Wolfman, I think) called me to the office and told me they needed to change my name. "Jeff Lester," the editor said, "isn't distinctive enough. It just doesn't have that ring."

"Plus, pilgrim," Stan said, "it sounds a little too Jewish. Take it from your ol' pal Stanley Leiber."

"No problem," I said. I knew most comic book characters changed their names. Reed Richard's real name, for example, was Archibald Leach. "How about Rich Ryder?"

"Too bland," the editor said, "Les Jefferson?"

"Steve Sanders?" I suggested. "That sounds like a good name for the Antichrist."

"Not menacing enough," The editor said.

"Calvin Connors? Kent Carmichael? Lex Leland?" I was convinced that, to be big, I had to have either an alliterative name or an inhuman appearance. All the Marvel greats had one or the other.

"I've got it!" Stan said, "Young Jay Allan! It screams innocence and youth."

Stan adjusted his gold chains and looked happy. "Don't worry," the editor said, leaning forward in his chair, "alliterative names are a thing of the past."

"Absolutely!" Stan exclaimed. "Why, we've entered the Mighty Marvel Millennium; a nascent, neo-renaissance of non-alliterative name-calling and neologisms!"

The editor put his hand on my shoulder. "No, really. Don't worry."

"Where Walks....The Heretic!" was published in Astonishing Tales issue 17. The Gil Kane cover shows me riding a flying bed with my head screwed around backwards and foam cresting my chin, not unlike Little Nemo on angel dust with severe neck trauma. "Will he save humanity," the cover asked, "or destroy it?" Inside, my origin story; a female private detective/single mother's only son, I was possessed by Satannish and partially exorcised by Damon Hellstrom himself. The exorcism allows Satannish partial control of my body as long as he agrees to do good things with the powers. Satannish agrees to this, thinking that he can figure a way to work this agreement in his favor. I, "young Jay Allan" agree so that I can help protect my mom. Together, the Son of Satan and I bust the issue's real villains, an occult trio called Bell, Book and Candle. It was kind of like beating up a well-set dinner table.

Sales weren't good, alas, and the compromises hadn't helped any with the Southern newsdealers. "Truth be told," the editor told me, "I think they'd be happier if you were called The Antichrist and had a more Jewish name. They're kind of conservative down there."

I lasted two more issues. I fought the Devil's Piano, a cult of devil-worshiping rock fans, and teamed up with Richard Rory, Man-Thing's sidekick, to fight Thog. Rory seemed glad to be working with someone other than Man-Thing. "The guy doesn't speak, and he smells like a septic tank," he confided to me over lunch. Rory apparently approached the editors about becoming a regular in my book and they told him my cancellation was imminent. I was pretty crestfallen about being canned, but Rory did his best to cheer me up. "Look, you got your own copyright and trademark. Marvel's going to protect that. Continuity is a wonderful thing. You'll get a story every couple of years, at least. Maybe more."

In fact, I got more. Marvel writers in the '70s -- introverted, ambitious, underpaid guys who were writing a dozen books each -- either put two heroes in one story, had them fight each other for the first half and then defeat the real villain for the second half (this was typically known in the industry as "a single issue story") or else threw a couple dozen characters into a convoluted, semi-coherent quasi-cosmic epic that lasted anywhere from two to six issues and left anywhere from four to eight dangling plot threads (this was referred to in the industry as "a typical issue"). As they played out their obsessions, I found myself, my bed, and my Little Nemo on horse tranquilizers demeanor, traveling from one book to the next.

I teamed up with Spider-Man, Man Wolf and the Frankenstein's Monster to fight some mad scientist in Marvel Team-Up. I was tutored by Jack Russell's sister in Werewolf By Night for a few issues and then helped fight The Coven. The Thing and I fought a possessed Golem in Marvel Two-In-One. The artists started drawing me a bit older. Between issues, I partied a lot with the other occult heroes; Brother Voodoo, John Jameson, It!, The Living Colossus . We spent a lot of time griping about how the window of opportunity had slammed firmly on our fingers and how we would have rather have been ordinary superheroes, or at least part of the Kung-Fu craze. We used to get together with all of DC's failed Conan rip-offs and drink in this little bar off Times Square. Partying with werewolves and barbarians; that was the '70s for everybody, I think.

I joined a team of psychic investigators that assisted SHIELD in Captain America. Steve Englehart made me conservative and right-wing and had me start stalking Peggy Carter. Ghost Rider, Morbius the Living Vampire, and I raced to the gates of hell in the "Race with the Devil!" issue of Ghost Rider. A young Todd McFarlane wrote in, saying that I was his favorite hero. "I frequently feel like I'm possessed by the Devil," Todd wrote in youthful enthusiasm. "How could The Heretic not be my favorite character?"

I popped up in my civilian identity as a film student in The Defenders. I got recruited by The Avengers. Steve Englehart made me left-wing and reactionary and had me start stalking the Scarlet Witch. Dave Cockrum gave me a make-over, changed my name to "Legion" and got rid of my bed and pajamas look. He gave me a multi-colored jumpsuit that, sadly, only he and George Perez had the diligence to draw properly. I was in the last two issues of The Champions, where Bill Mantlo made me politically centrist and apathetic and had me start stalking the Black Widow. I appeared in Marvel Team-Up again where Claremont and Byrne gave me back my name, bed and pajamas, and made me a Québécois liberationist who started stalking Colleen Wing. I popped up in the Christmas issue of Heroes for Hire where I'm shown frothing into the punch bowl. Jo Duffy had me leave the book to start up a detective agency on the West Coast with The White Tiger. A TV pilot, with Leif Garrett playing me, was shot but never aired. I was brought briefly into The Defenders by DeMatteis, who had me convert to Judaism and study to become a Rabbi. It was a strenuous run; I got officially named the Antichrist, got fully exorcised by Hellstrom, and became the rabbi that performed the marriage of Son of Satan and Hellcat. Finally, I was in a few issues of West Coast Avengers as the White Tiger's partner, a rabbi detective. Steve Englehart made me gay, environmentally active and had me start stalking Hawkeye. When he took over, John Byrne had the White Tiger and I get run over by a garbage truck. No one ever said if I lived or died.

That didn't stop me, though. I approached Todd McFarlane a few years ago at a con. "Todd, Todd," I said, "I used to be your favorite character. Remember me?" "I liked you when you weren't a Québécois liberationist, fuckhead!" Todd muttered, then had his security guards rough me up. I started a correspondence with Kurt Busiek, who mentioned that he and George Perez wanted to bring me back as Legion in the Avengers "because George likes that Cockrum costume so much" but decided not to because it would confuse New Mutants fans. Still, Perez drew me in one of the crowd scenes on his huge Crisis mural, but Alex Ross changed the drawing so that I looked more like Twisty of Freakforce Five. He also changed the drawing so that I was being held in a headlock by Hoppy the Marvel Bunny. "I never liked the politics of that guy," Ross said later in an interview. My only real hope is the FreakForce Five will somehow get a Vertigo book from one of those drug popping GenX writers who thinks that bringing us back will be good for a few laughs. It'll be rough, though: a few years back, Tweaky finally hit his limit, announced to the world that he was Superman and could fly, then jumped off the World Trade Center. Fortunately, he could fly, but DC's lawyers nailed him for copyright infringement. I doubt he would give a new book his blessing.

Following the advice of Richard Rory, who now runs a comic shop in Las Vegas, I started writing this column, hoping to share some of my insights about the industry. And so here I am, the result of a life spent in comics; a dispossessed, ex-gay, ex-rabbi, ex-Québécois liberationist with several restraining orders and a SHIELD I.D. card that gets me a discount at Sizzler on "Agents of SHIELD Night." Rick Jones, as you probably know, is still getting work. Every once in a while I get a letter from old fans. I even still get mail from the Québécois liberationists, not that I can read French, but I get the gist of it.

My old fans say they liked me before I became "too compromised" but no one can agree when exactly that was. Me, I see nothing but a continuous chain of compromises shackling me to my past and I sometimes wonder, "Was it worth it? Really?"

On the other hand, sometimes... sometimes I sit on my bed for hours, reading comics, waiting for it to shake and move, wanting my head to creak around at a crazy angle, hoping for the world to become strange and crazy again in a way that somehow makes sense. But, maybe that's just me.

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