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The Secrets of the '70s September, 2000

Why'd I pick this Fanboy out of all the two+ years worth of columns? I dunno; I guess because the subject of poor ol' Skull the Slayer is close to my heart. And I guess because I was happy to write a piece that, while nostalgic, was able to admit that you can't go home again.

Fanboy Rampage By Jeff Lester

So I got a call from Larry the other day (well, actually, today) to talk about this upcoming Fanboy Rampage (well, actually, that I was very, very late) and he said "By the way, I've got some space left over so just rampage to your little fanboy's heart's content." Then he went back to work on putting together PlanetLar's next killer project, the Space Beaver collection. (I've figured out, by the way, the secret to Larry's publishing success; he publishes books that could easily be mistaken for deviant science-fiction pornography. Astronauts in Trouble? Space Beaver? What's next, Behind the Green Airlock?)

But, frankly, I'm still recovering from last month. Those brutal inner demons have been satiated by savaging Frank Miller's future career. I haven't even thought any new mean things about Stan Lee. And so for the last few days, I've tried to get in touch with my "little fanboy," that eternal 12 year old nestled somewhere near my already-shot-from-all-those-beers-on-Friday-with-Larry kidneys. What is he thinking about? What does he want to talk about? What's important to him? Well, I'll tell you.

Skull the Slayer. Anyone here remember Skull the Slayer? Man, I still do. Marvel Comics, 1975 and 1976, and gloriously high-concept: Skull was a Vietnam war vet wanted by the law who got sucked into the Devil's Triangle and had to fight dinosaurs (with the help of--wait for it-- a belt that gives him super-strength that he finds on the body of a dead alien).

Lemme run that one back to you in case you missed anything; Vietnam vet anti-hero, Devil's Triangle, dinosaurs, extraterrestrials, super-powers from a belt. Is that the '70s in a complete nutshell or what? Admittedly no mentions of disco or the devil in that summary, but other than that, Skull the Slayer had it all.

Now I know what you're thinking; No, Jeff, you're saying to yourself, Skull can't be an accurate portrayal of a decade of American life because he got his superpowers from a belt. If he had gotten his superpowers from a headband or matching wristbands, then he would be a proper image of the Zeitgeist of a major world superpower during the '70s.

And I would say, yes, but he wore a headband. And matching wristbands. And there's something about a guy who puts on alien belt and gets super-strength that is very satisfying.

Yes, that is true, you would say.

Because somewhere, I would continue, there has to be a shirt and two pair of pants that go with that belt that must confer near-godly powers.

Yes, yes, you would say, good point. But by the way, you would add, what was the deal with all the wristbands and headbands?

And I would say, Well, gee, my theory is that it was a strange side-effect of the sudden interest America took in the 70s of tennis in general, and Bjorn Borg, he of the sweaty headband and wristbands, in particular.

Huh, you would say. That makes sense, I guess.

I wonder, where is Skull now? Oh sure, he's fictional, he doesn't exist. But where is he? Last we saw him, he had (if memory serves) helped the Thing save the life of President Carter out at Cape Canaveral and could look forward to getting a pardon. So, what happened to him? I imagine him washing cars down in Florida, living in some small trailer on the edge of the swamps, his beer gut hanging over a smelly, faded extraterrestrial belt. He hasn't seen a dinosaur in over 20 years. I don't imagine him unhappy. I wish him well.

And you know what else my inner fanboy thinks about? Every time I turn on MTV and see the view from the MTV Studio over the great big open-air mall that is Time Square, I think "where the hell is Luke Cage in that mess?"

Luke Cage also had a cool headband and matching wristbands. Come to think of it, Luke was also a fugitive from the law. But whereas Skull fought dinosaurs in the Devil's Triangle, Luke Cage fought gangsters and pushers on the streets of New York. And his office was over a cheap-ass rep house movie theater in seedy Times Square.

Now if you did a Luke Cage comic book today, would it be half as cool to put Cage's offices over the cavernous Virgin Megastore? No, it would not.

So where is he? Someone told me that Marvel had continued his adventures in the '90s with a new book, but all I found was some comic book called "Cage" with a guy who looked like a pro linebacker. Were there wristbands? There were not. Was a headband prominently displayed? No, no, I tell you. No. All I can conclude is that it was not the same person, that it was some impostor. I doubt he lived in Times Square, I doubt that his favorite exclamation was "Sweet Christmas!" It seems to me that it was not the same man at all.

And there's a dozen more Marvel characters just like him, living in the back of my head, renting out space. Is there anyone else who wonders what happened to The Golem? Brother Voodoo? Man-Wolf? Paladin? Master of Kung-Fu? Union Jack? The Prowler? Devil-Slayer? Iron Fist? Omega the Unknown? Werewolf by Night? Jack of Hearts? The Falcon? The Shroud? And how about Razorback, the guy that dressed like a pig and drove a big rig and used a CB radio? Man, I loved that guy. He was like The Rhino, if The Rhino had listened to "Convoy" one too many times.

All the second stringers, all the has-beens, and the coulda-beens, and the never-weres they're just as important to me now as they ever were. And whenever somebody does a revival of one of those characters, it's invariably terrible, usually because the writer and artist feel that they somehow have to update the character, or make him more relevant, or something.

Sadly, it's probably just the "something." The biggest mistake, I'm forced to admit, in trying to revise these characters is ever handling them at all. After all, Skull the Slayer went through three or four writers in the space of eight issues, and the comic changed direction each time as writers like Wein, Englehart and Mantlo tried to come to grips with a character that wasn't a character, and a story that wasn't really a story (only Jack Kirby could do something as one note as Devil Dinosaur and do something with it for as long as they'd let him). By the time issue 7 came out, the editors announced that they were returning Skull The Slayer to "what made him great." In issue 8, the comic was canceled, and looking back, I realized the editors had kept their word. They had indeed returned Skull the Slayer to what made him great: oblivion.

In short, despite all my whining, I don't want to see all-new adventures of Skull The Slayer, rasslin' dinosaurs and bein' all tough and Charlton Hestonish and crap. But I'd love to see him older, fat and hopefully happy, maybe helping lift a car so some secondary Marvel character can free themselves. In short, I want some closure.

But because the main characters of the Marvel Universe have been around for 30 to 40 years now and yet have maybe aged four, you can't have Skull age the 25 years owed to him, because what does that say about The Thing who teamed up with him? You can't do anything with the sucky characters except either bring them back exactly as they were and make fun of what huge walking anachronisms they are, or try and update them for modern times and spoil whatever was cool about them in the first place.

For me at least, the Marvel Universe is a great big wax museum, resistant to age but no longer able to be mistaken for real life, unless you sort of dim the lights and take off your glasses. And even then, everything seems kind of quiet and still and most of the side exhibits are closed. ("Excuse me, sir? Sir? Sir, the Hall of Satan-Related Offspring is closed for remodeling. Please stick to the main path and the Hall of Mutants. Thank you.") But maybe someday, someday, someone will be able to open all those doors again, light up all those exhibits in just the right way, and add a few more relevant statues, and we'll all be able to be fooled again into thinking that we're looking at something much larger and much richer than real life. I sure hope so.

Because I've got the headband and wristbands in my desk drawer just waiting for when they do.

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