Let The Eagle Soar
Aug. 25th, 2004 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI didn't have American comix when I was a kid. A couple came my way and I was baffled. The cultural differences were so great that they might have been in a foreign language. One of the ones I aquired was a cowboy comic. It was so much more brutal than anything I was used to. The final image of two cowpokes riding away from Boot Hill with a grave-marker in the foreground disturbed me so much that I hid it away under other books and magazines in my book-case. I didn't want to look at it for fear of nightmares.
So the whole culture of the super hero leaves me cold. All I see in it is that infantile obsession with musculature which I renounced around the time I started noticing girls.
What I had in place of real comix was a thing called the Eagle.
It was published by a dodgy former clergyman called the Rev Marcus Morris- who later went on the publish soft porn. Morris's Eagle was a quasi-educational magazine- high-toned and reassuringly expensive, intended to stouten the hearts of young sons of the Empire. Its star strip- printed on the front page and drawn by the great Frank Bellamy- featured Dan Dare, pilot of the Future- a Battle of Britain type in an RAF cap (I believe he may even have smoked a pipe) who flew space-ships and battled against a huge-headed, green, inter-Galactic super-genius called the Mekon.
If you'd said "Batman" to me- I'd have pictured Digby- Dan Dare's personal body servant- a comical little cockney chap- who was amusing and plucky in the best traditions of the London Blitz.
But Dan Dare didn't particularly ring my chimes. I was a swot (an amusing mid-century word for nerd) and what I liked best were the strips celebrating great heroes from British history. King Harold, for instance. O the flowing Saxon locks, the jutting chin, the piercing blue eyes, the sheer, unadulterated nobility!
And then there was Robert Clive- the guy who stole India for the British- and General Gordon- who got sheesh-kebabed on a jihadi's spear at Khartoum (they didn't tell us about the religious mania and the alcoholism) and Bernard Law Mongomery (whom I saw in the flesh once) the funny, little lisping gnome who "twounced Wommel" at el Alamein and later spatted with Eisenhower and committed us to a Bridge Too Far.
It amazes me. Only fifty years ago- less than that- and the self-conceit of the British was still intact. We were a martial, imperial nation- and a strip showing Clive (in reality a thief and psychopath) displaying noble disdain for cringing oriental types- dashing them and their proffered bribes to the floor with a manly Saxon swipe- could be published in a kiddies' mag and not a voice be raised in protest.
Yesterday's high-toned kiddy-fare is today's guilty secret. Forget about it. Hide it away. To the modern mind Morris took a step up the moral ladder when he jacked in the Eagle for porn.
I'd have done better with Batman. Or would I? Oh I don't know.
The Eagle was pretty much the last gasp of Empire. We'd already given India away and made asses of ourselves at Suez. Next thing down the line was Monty Python- with all those jokes about chaps in pith helmets. One thing leads to another. The lion's carcass shelters bees and the bees make honey.
So the whole culture of the super hero leaves me cold. All I see in it is that infantile obsession with musculature which I renounced around the time I started noticing girls.
What I had in place of real comix was a thing called the Eagle.
It was published by a dodgy former clergyman called the Rev Marcus Morris- who later went on the publish soft porn. Morris's Eagle was a quasi-educational magazine- high-toned and reassuringly expensive, intended to stouten the hearts of young sons of the Empire. Its star strip- printed on the front page and drawn by the great Frank Bellamy- featured Dan Dare, pilot of the Future- a Battle of Britain type in an RAF cap (I believe he may even have smoked a pipe) who flew space-ships and battled against a huge-headed, green, inter-Galactic super-genius called the Mekon.
If you'd said "Batman" to me- I'd have pictured Digby- Dan Dare's personal body servant- a comical little cockney chap- who was amusing and plucky in the best traditions of the London Blitz.
But Dan Dare didn't particularly ring my chimes. I was a swot (an amusing mid-century word for nerd) and what I liked best were the strips celebrating great heroes from British history. King Harold, for instance. O the flowing Saxon locks, the jutting chin, the piercing blue eyes, the sheer, unadulterated nobility!
And then there was Robert Clive- the guy who stole India for the British- and General Gordon- who got sheesh-kebabed on a jihadi's spear at Khartoum (they didn't tell us about the religious mania and the alcoholism) and Bernard Law Mongomery (whom I saw in the flesh once) the funny, little lisping gnome who "twounced Wommel" at el Alamein and later spatted with Eisenhower and committed us to a Bridge Too Far.
It amazes me. Only fifty years ago- less than that- and the self-conceit of the British was still intact. We were a martial, imperial nation- and a strip showing Clive (in reality a thief and psychopath) displaying noble disdain for cringing oriental types- dashing them and their proffered bribes to the floor with a manly Saxon swipe- could be published in a kiddies' mag and not a voice be raised in protest.
Yesterday's high-toned kiddy-fare is today's guilty secret. Forget about it. Hide it away. To the modern mind Morris took a step up the moral ladder when he jacked in the Eagle for porn.
I'd have done better with Batman. Or would I? Oh I don't know.
The Eagle was pretty much the last gasp of Empire. We'd already given India away and made asses of ourselves at Suez. Next thing down the line was Monty Python- with all those jokes about chaps in pith helmets. One thing leads to another. The lion's carcass shelters bees and the bees make honey.
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Date: 2004-08-26 01:07 am (UTC)