LUDIC LOG

TEN EMOTIONS INSTILLED BY READING SECRET WARS II #2.

Emotion 1: Dread. The first thing one sees on the cover of Marvel Comics' 1985 production of Secret Wars II #2 is the terrible art. Only one person could have produced this terrible art, and there's his name, right next to the word "BEYONDER" in "Quoth the Beyonder: I'll Take Manhattan!" (Note: the Beyonder doth not quoth this anywhere in the comic.) It's Al Milgrom, and the knowledge that there are twenty-plus pages of Al Milgrom to come fills me with a sense of dread.

Emotion 2: Discomfort. The opening page of the issue shows the Beyonder, the deeply uninteresting protagonist of the Secret Wars saga, about to jump off the top of one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Ouch!

Emotion 3: Relief. In the early goings of Secret Wars II, Jim Shooter was trying to be a third-rate Chris Claremont instead of a fourth-rate Stan Lee. So this particular issue has billions and billions of word-heavy captions which are -- well, you can't really call them overwritten, because that implies a grandiosity that's not really in play here, but they certainly aren't underwritten. Let's call them extrawritten. Hence, you get cosmic gop like this: "Yet, 'now' he stands, incarnate in human flesh, having height, breadth and thickness. He is moving thorugh a fourth dimension, 'time', in a synchronization with other 'things' and beings here. The results are puzzling." One is relieved to learn, though, that Shooter identifies himself as the 'scripter' of this issue, saving the word 'writer' from being tarnished forever.

Emotion 4: Puzzlement. The premise of this issue is that the Beyonder is trying to learn what it is like to be human. However, since it's already been established that he is omnipotent and omniscient, why he can't learn this in a microsecond is not immediately (or eventually) apprehensible. He somehow understands hunger, knows how to speak English, and knows what food is and where to get it, but he doesn't understand that you're not supposed to bite a soda bottle in half and get a mouthful of bloody Chiclets.

Emotion 5: Resignation. The fact that She-Hulk is featured in this issue means that I have to mention her presence, and the mention of She-Hulk is going to lead to another three hundred hits from people Googling 'she-hulk + "naked". However, I am resigned to my fate as a detour for funnybook pornographers on the information superhighway.

Emotion 6: Confusion. So many questions are raised by this issue. Why is Hate-Monger here? Why does he just happen to be carrying around a full set of bondage gear in this jacket pocket? Why on Earth would Spider-Man, who wears one of the most garish outfits in the history of design, say "His mother sure dresses him funny" in reference to the Beyonder's simple white bodysuit? Why does the inking inexplicably shift in mid-issue from Joe Rubenstein and Steve Leialoha? If the Beyonder can read Peter Parker's mind, why doesn't he know what clothes are? Why does the Scourge show up, and why does the Fantastic Four treat his murder of the Hate-Monger so casually? What does any of this have to do with the Beyonder? Happily, the confusion is leavened with a healthy dose of ennui when you realize that you don't actually care what the answers are.

Emotion 7: Suspicion. There's something kind of...off about this issue. The Invisible Girl is portrayed as a bit of a shrill, needy bitch, and the black homeless woman who befriends the Beyonder is a total caricature, all the way down to the bugs flying around her head and the stink lines eminating from her Aunt Jemimah-ish body. Did Jim Shooter have a bad breakup? Is "Old Elsie" and her grotesque parody of poverty (and simultaneous advocacy of capitalism) his way of reacting to his sudden wealth and fame? It could be as simple as this comic sucking raw walrus ass.

Emotion 8: Disappointment. Suspicions of walrus-ass-suckage are confirmed the farther along the comic progresses. Laziness and incompetency manifest themselves at every level, in what is supposed to be Marvel's prestige book of the moment. Although it's supposed to be three in the morning when the Beyonder visits the headquarters of Luke Cage and Danny Rand, it is quite clearly broad daylight outside; after going to great pains to establish that the Beyonder wants to experience life as a normal human (thus providing an extremely limp pretext for why he doesn't just miraculously know in an instant everything there is to know about reality), he spends the entire comic doing non-human things like teleporting, turning invisible, healing himself of horrible physical damage, flying, manipulating the flow of time, and telekinesis. Reading this comic simply drives home how much of my life I have wasted trying to convince myself and others that comics are a worthwhile artistic medium.

Emotion 9: Shame. It's hard to tell what causes me the most shame and degradation. Is it Jim Shoother's selective recall of the laws of physics, like where he has the Beyonder turn and entire skyscraper into gold, but insists that such a skyscraper would collapse under its own weight? Is it the portrayal of Power Man as the world's stupidest Negro, a man so dumb he doesn't understand the most rudimentary principles of economics and seems to thing that a heavier object will hit the ground sooner if dropped after a lighter object? Is it the recurrence of phrases like "mulitplicity begets incompleteness", "ignorant space-geek" and "sheeeeeooot!"? Mostly, I think it is that I paid seventy-five cents for this comic.

Emotion 10: Nostalgia. There's a contest on the back cover for "the Nutty Payday Instant Winner Game", and the grand price is an Apple IIe computer system! With a whopping 128k memory -- enough to hold a large text file! WOW!