Five Quarts: A Personal and Natural History of Blood by Bill Hayes Page B
Authors: Bill Hayes
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faith.
“Well, there was no question,” Shannon added. “I just turned completely around and walked the other way.”
F IVE
Origin Story
Is he strong? Listen, bud!
He’s got radioactive blood. . . .
—
S PIDER -M AN
THEME SONG LYRIC , 1968
MOST OF MY BEST INFORMATION ON THE ARCANE INNER world of comic books has come from Steve’s occasional late-night, half-medicated commentaries. “Listen to this,” he said in bed recently, reading aloud a snippet from the letters page of a back issue of
Fantastic Four:
“This is a fan writing: ‘Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, . . . The characters shine. They live and breathe. Real, red human blood pumps in their veins. I can easily believe their world for, though colorful and bizarre, it is just as real as ours. . . .’ ”
Steve chuckled. “Wow, he’s got it bad.”
I put down my
New Yorker.
“Fantastic Four? That’s the one with Mary Hart?”
“Uh-huh.”
Of course, this made perfect sense to me. A young Mary Hart (from TV’s
Entertainment Tonight
) would be Steve’s pick to play the Invisible Woman in a big-budget Fantastic Four movie.
Steve then commented on the fan’s use of the word
real
to describe a comic with a woman who can turn invisible, her brother who can burst into controlled flame, her husband whose body becomes Silly Putty, and her friend who’s essentially an animate pile of rocks. I still wasn’t sure, though, whether Steve was poking fun at the letter writer or being serious.
“Cool, isn’t it?” he said. Okay, there was my answer.
“Yeah.” It
is
cool. I find the wholehearted suspension of disbelief that avid comics fans share to be marvelous. Although I prefer the sure footing of nonfiction, I still envy that fearless willingness to lunge into pure imagination. My beloved collections of Joan Didion essays are never so transporting. The degree to which a comic-book reader is drawn into the illusion depends upon the adherence to a set of conventions dating back to the late 1930s, the earliest days of this indigenous American art form. The heroes must have fabulous powers or abilities. They have bright costumes and dual identities. The conflict between good and evil is clearly delineated. And the convention that wraps all these elements into one neat package is the origin story, the tale of a character’s pivotal moment of transformation. Whereas ancient myths always have a definite resolution—odyssey’s end, deification, betrothal, and so forth—superhero comics are usually meant to be never-ending sagas. Regardless of the adventures yet to come, though, the character is always anchored by his or her origin. Superman—no matter what a current creative team does with him—will always be a survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, raised by the Kents in Smallville, Kansas.
In the life of a comic book, the origin story may be retold dozens of times. Usually it’s done in a flashback, deftly recapped in a handful of panels, often to jump-start a new storyline. Marvel Comics, mindful that each issue might be a reader’s first, used to summarize the title character’s origin in a box on the splash page. I love these old thumbnail bios. Allow me to introduce, for instance, the original Spider-Woman:
When Jessica Drew’s father injected her with a serum of spider blood, he cured her of a fatal disease . . . and changed her life completely! Watch her, now, as she confronts her responsibilities, problems and unbelievable POWERS!
The idea that heroes often have supercharged blood reflects the real-world belief that qualities course through our blood. There being no scientific evidence for this does not dispel the notion. When the anchor of the nightly news praises firefighters for the “bravery pumping through their veins,” we don’t disagree. Heroes, whether actual or fictional, seem to have a blood type the rest of us don’t. This conception is amplified manyfold in comic books. Captain America, for instance, has Super-Soldier
“Well, there was no question,” Shannon added. “I just turned completely around and walked the other way.”
F IVE
Origin Story
Is he strong? Listen, bud!
He’s got radioactive blood. . . .
—
S PIDER -M AN
THEME SONG LYRIC , 1968
MOST OF MY BEST INFORMATION ON THE ARCANE INNER world of comic books has come from Steve’s occasional late-night, half-medicated commentaries. “Listen to this,” he said in bed recently, reading aloud a snippet from the letters page of a back issue of
Fantastic Four:
“This is a fan writing: ‘Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, . . . The characters shine. They live and breathe. Real, red human blood pumps in their veins. I can easily believe their world for, though colorful and bizarre, it is just as real as ours. . . .’ ”
Steve chuckled. “Wow, he’s got it bad.”
I put down my
New Yorker.
“Fantastic Four? That’s the one with Mary Hart?”
“Uh-huh.”
Of course, this made perfect sense to me. A young Mary Hart (from TV’s
Entertainment Tonight
) would be Steve’s pick to play the Invisible Woman in a big-budget Fantastic Four movie.
Steve then commented on the fan’s use of the word
real
to describe a comic with a woman who can turn invisible, her brother who can burst into controlled flame, her husband whose body becomes Silly Putty, and her friend who’s essentially an animate pile of rocks. I still wasn’t sure, though, whether Steve was poking fun at the letter writer or being serious.
“Cool, isn’t it?” he said. Okay, there was my answer.
“Yeah.” It
is
cool. I find the wholehearted suspension of disbelief that avid comics fans share to be marvelous. Although I prefer the sure footing of nonfiction, I still envy that fearless willingness to lunge into pure imagination. My beloved collections of Joan Didion essays are never so transporting. The degree to which a comic-book reader is drawn into the illusion depends upon the adherence to a set of conventions dating back to the late 1930s, the earliest days of this indigenous American art form. The heroes must have fabulous powers or abilities. They have bright costumes and dual identities. The conflict between good and evil is clearly delineated. And the convention that wraps all these elements into one neat package is the origin story, the tale of a character’s pivotal moment of transformation. Whereas ancient myths always have a definite resolution—odyssey’s end, deification, betrothal, and so forth—superhero comics are usually meant to be never-ending sagas. Regardless of the adventures yet to come, though, the character is always anchored by his or her origin. Superman—no matter what a current creative team does with him—will always be a survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, raised by the Kents in Smallville, Kansas.
In the life of a comic book, the origin story may be retold dozens of times. Usually it’s done in a flashback, deftly recapped in a handful of panels, often to jump-start a new storyline. Marvel Comics, mindful that each issue might be a reader’s first, used to summarize the title character’s origin in a box on the splash page. I love these old thumbnail bios. Allow me to introduce, for instance, the original Spider-Woman:
When Jessica Drew’s father injected her with a serum of spider blood, he cured her of a fatal disease . . . and changed her life completely! Watch her, now, as she confronts her responsibilities, problems and unbelievable POWERS!
The idea that heroes often have supercharged blood reflects the real-world belief that qualities course through our blood. There being no scientific evidence for this does not dispel the notion. When the anchor of the nightly news praises firefighters for the “bravery pumping through their veins,” we don’t disagree. Heroes, whether actual or fictional, seem to have a blood type the rest of us don’t. This conception is amplified manyfold in comic books. Captain America, for instance, has Super-Soldier
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