Book From A Library: The Science Of Superheroes

By Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg

I’ve been reading comic book superheroes for a long time now. An unrelated fact is that I trained as a scientist (I even have a PhD in biochemistry). In all that time, I have never had a problem with the use of science in superhero comic books. Science is for explaining the wonders and mysteries of the universe; comic books exist to entertain me, with a side order of informing me when appropriate. When I saw this book in the library, I wanted to read it because I couldn’t understand quite why it existed – they do know that comic books are fictional, right?

The title is a little misleading – this isn’t a book explaining how superheroes can work within the constraints of the laws of science. It examines aspects of science that are related to aspects of superheroes. This is a significant difference, but it makes for an interesting read. The first chapter was particularly fascinating, as it discusses the Drake equation (which provides an estimate of the number of intelligent species in our galaxy) to demonstrate the possibility of Krypton, before talking about a book called Rare Earth, which examined the various factors in the Drake equation and show that, instead of many planets with life on it, habitable planets are quite rare – the habitable zone is more complicated, possibly requiring a gas giant like Jupiter to exist as a magnet for comets; for biological life to evolve requires three billion years, which requires a G2 type star (a lifetime of ten billion years) that are not very common. The authors use this to explain why Jor-El sent his son to Earth – there was no other choice. They then go on to explain that Krypton can’t exist because the size it would need to be for Superman to be as strong as he is on Earth is impossibly large for a planet with that gravity to exist. Fun stuff.

The next chapter talks about cosmic rays and gamma radiation, stating the obvious fact that the Hulk wouldn’t exist, but then proposing a theory for the Green Fluorescent Protein version of the Hulk, based on real science anabolic steroids and genetic manipulation. The third chapter talks about the possible contents of Batman’s utility belt and the basis behind the Cataclysm storyline, which is a bizarre choice of subject among all the various facets of Batman. The fourth chapter talks about underwater superheroes, which takes in Plato’s description of Atlantis and the aquatic ape theory of the evolution of man (which states that early humans spent more time in water than we do now, something I hadn’t heard of before), before talking about the mechanics of living underwater (breathing fluids and withstanding pressure).

The fifth chapter talks about Spider-Man – how almost none of the attributes of ‘spider powers’ relate to actual spiders, before discussing clones because of the infamous Clone Saga. The sixth chapter uses the Green Lantern concept to discuss black holes in detail as a possible source for the infinite energy required to power the Green Lantern Corps. The next chapter uses Ant Man and the Atom as starting points for discussing the Square Cubed Law in relation to shrinking and growing, with an aside for atomic structure and some quantum mechanics. The eighth chapter talks about the Flash: after stating that stories with someone moving that fast would be really boring because criminals wouldn’t be any sort of challenge, they examine the impossibility of moving at the speeds mentioned in the comics. This involves discussion of the calories required to power the speed, not being able to see or hear properly, causing sonic booms, the trouble with momentum and a thorough discussion of the speed of light – if the Flash actually moved at the speed of light, he would have infinite mass (i.e. all the mass in the universe), which is impossible.

The ninth chapter uses the X-Men to talk about the theory of evolution (giving a good kicking to Creationism while they are it); the tenth chapter talks about science fiction comic books in general, and how they ignore science for the sake of telling a fun story in a short number of pages, and a mention of the Grandfather Paradox when discussing time travel (which allows for a section on Einstein-Rosen bridges). A lot of this might sound like nerdy nitpicking, but that’s not what the book is about – it just wants to ‘edutain’ on the elements of science involved in the comic books they love. They leave the final chapter to talk about Carl Barks and his use of accurate science in stories of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, just to prove that they’re not haters.

The last chapter highlights the love the authors have for comic books – the science may invalidate the accuracy but it doesn’t stop the enjoyment. Each chapter has a very informative introduction to the characters and the comics in a historical framework, providing excellent overviews of the development of the science fiction superheroes of the Silver Age. The book is a very enjoyable combination of superheroes and proper science, essayed in a highly readable style.

My London Comic Book Mart Experience

The National Collectors Marketplace is a regular mart for comic books, trading cards, books and merchandise related to science fiction, film and TV. According to the website, it is the largest of its sort, hosting 130 tables in the Royal National Hotel near Russell Square in central London. When I arrived on a wet Sunday at the beginning of the month, I could believe the claim to size.

The hotel had three large rooms packed with sellers – I recognised Paul Hudson, who owned Comic Showcase (one of the shops I frequented in my youth) until it closed down in 2006, and Incognito Comics (I used to buy from the Canterbury store when I lived there) had a huge stall of boxes filled with 25p comics – with the emphasis on comic books. And the comic book fans were there in force to buy from them; I arrived 30 minutes after the doors opened at noon, and the place was packed. Unfortunately, these readers of comic books hadn’t taken to heart any of the ideals of altruism and looking out for your fellow man that populate superhero stories, because they didn’t care about anyone or anything else apart from finding comics at a good price.

People – mostly men – were flicking through the comics in the longboxes and not letting anyone get a look in. If you were lucky to locate a space to examine the comics, the people on the either side were not very friendly or patient. There was one chap who had spent all his money on comics and not an optician, because he kept his head absurdly close to the comics as he flicked through them. There were the hunters with their lists – computer printouts of spreadsheets for some, aged, folded pages of hand-scribbled titles for others – obsessively going through every box and every comic book to find their missing items. There were some ‘ordinary’ punters, but there was also a large contingent of the type of comic book fan who are examples of the stereotype that rest of the world sees: overweight, wearing superhero t-shirts that were too small, unfamiliar with personal hygiene (the smell in the rooms was a little on the ripe side).

I had intended to take some photos of the mart to accompany this reminiscence but I felt too awkward, too uncomfortable in the confined space with the crowds - if you want some photos, see the report by Dom of London Loves Comics. I’d been looking forward to rifling through comic boxes looking for bargains and trying to fill gaps in my collection, but I felt out of place and didn’t enjoy it as much as I had wanted. Oh, I wandered around and looked diligently through the boxes – I even found the five issues of Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis at 50p each – and thought the variety of material for sale was interesting (trays full of Doctor Who novels in plastic bags, old British comics lying on tables, old cult films on DVD, original artwork, even old British porn mags). However, the experience left me little deflated and out of sync with my collecting hobby, which is a shame. I can’t fully explain it but I don’t have the urge to return to a comic book mart, even though I still have the desire to buy cheap comic book. It’s not to do with the National Collectors Marketplace, just an adverse reaction to my first interaction for a while with the hardcore comic collecting community. I don’t classify myself as a real geek because I don’t have the depths of geekness I perceive in real geeks, even though I’ve just spent 600 words talking about going around a room full of old comic books, but this was yet another sign to confirm my belief. Your mileage may vary.

Notes On A Film: Attack The Block

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish have been part of pop culture commentary since the days of their delightfully homemade television programme, The Adam & Joe Show, the highlight of which was the re-creations of films with soft toys. They continue to amuse and entertain with their BBC 6 Music radio show on Saturday mornings. The fact that Joe Cornish has written and directed his own film, and that it is really good, is still mind-boggling.

This is a great debut from a man who knows and loves films, but there are no homages or nods to other films. This is very much a film that exists on its own terms, in its own right (even if there is a sense of Spielberg that haunts the background, as Cornish brings the same awe and wonder to an alien incursion but in south London and a slightly bleaker worldview).

The basic premise: an alien drops to Earth near a south London estate where a group of boys are mugging a nurse. They beat the alien to death, and return home to recover. However, more aliens land on Earth and they are a lot bigger and nastier than the first alien, and the council block comes under attack. The boys have to fight back.

The film is scary without being excessively horrific (although there is a fleeting gruesome special effect) and it has humour but not in a parodying fashion – it’s a serious film about serious alien monsters but the laughs come through character and situation. There are parallels with Shaun of the Dead – both have a sense of their part of London, both take the material seriously but have humour in them, both have Nick Frost and same producing partners, and both have tight plots that set up elements that play out later (such as the flat on the block that has a large Union Flag, or one of the kids who pretends to have a limp in front of his gran so he can take a weapon out of his flat). However, apart from both being very good films, they are separate entities.

Everything in the film (apart from the aliens, obviously) feels real – Cornish lives in south London, and he was mugged by teenagers, which inspired the start of the movie, and spent time ‘procuring jazz-related herbs’ (as he described it in this interview in The Guardian) on Wandsworth estates in his youth (one of the characters, a middle-class white young man who visits the block for weed, could be a Cornish stand-in), so he knows the place and the setting intimately, and it shows. It rings of authenticity, which emphasises the alien element, and allows the alien element to play out in a believable world.

Attack The Block is well filmed and well acted – the kids are really good and the slang they use sounds just right (I live in south London and the teens sound like that); there is no concession to the slang used but it isn’t impenetrable. Also, the film has something to say about the attitude towards these kids on estates, saying something interesting about hoodies as human beings and not just Daily Mail headlines.

Attack The Block is a really good film – it’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s genuine, it’s well done and everyone on screen does a good job. It’s a great debut film and it promises good things from Cornish in the future; I guess that means we’ll have to live without the excellent radio show if he becomes a full-time filmmaker.

Rating: DAVE

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]

Book: Comic Creators On X-Men

It seems the right time to talk about this book after my long rambling review of X-Men: First Class. My love of the X-Men might have had some impact in my enjoyment of the film, but that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the books I read as a teenager nor my affection for the creators of that work.

This is a strange book: compiling a collection of interviews with writers and artists who have worked on the X-Men leads to a book that becomes dated the moment it is published, which is perhaps why I found this book for £2.50 in the sale section of Forbidden Planet. However, it is a nice way to provide a voice for creators from the previous generation and allow them to share their stories on what was once the dominant franchise in superhero comic books.

The book doesn’t interview everyone involved with the history of the X-Men – there are a lot of people who have had input in the >40-year history – and the book admits that fact up front. It’s a good list (although I would have liked an interview with Ann Nocenti, who edited the books at the times when they started to expand and become really successful, and Jim Lee would have been a good choice for an artist with an impact on the book): Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, Neal Adams, Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, John Byrne, Alan Davis, Louise Simonson, Marc Silvestri, Bob Harras, Scott Lobdell, Chris Bachalo, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar.

Tom DeFalco, former Editor-In-Chief at Marvel, does the interviews but, although he tries to keep things on topic, he does have a tendency to ask more general questions than the remit of the book would suggest (such as talking to Neal Adams for several pages about his breaking into the field of comics and his work before starting on X-Men). Most creators are given an equal number of pages, although the pages do include boxed sections with historical information about the X-Men and some artwork and script pages; however, Chris Claremont rightfully gets the most pages, and there is a lot to talk about and is perhaps the most interesting for a reader who grew up on The Uncanny X-Men and The New Mutants. The sections with Roy Thomas and Dave Cockrum provide some nice details about the decisions that were made leading into the new version of the book that would become so popular, and some Cockrum character guides for some of the new characters.

The interview with John Byrne is interesting, including his thoughts on what happened and the work he did after the landmark run with Claremont (he did some Wolverine work, briefly wrote script over some plots before working on X-Men: The Hidden Years). We get different views on the Claremont/Byrne split from Claremont, Byrne and Louise Simonson (who was editor at the time), but the book doesn’t veer into troublesome areas too much – the section with Bob Harras seems to be deliberately diplomatic and avoid saying anything problematic (it was interesting to see that Harras had started out as a salesman in stores before lucking into an editorial assistant position at Marvel), even though he was in charge of the X-books in the most tumultuous time of its history: Claremont leaving the books, the rise of Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld on the books before the exodus to Image, not to mention the trouble that Marvel was having in the mid-1990s and Harras’ elevation to Editor-In-Chief.

The interview with Scott Lobdell goes some way to making me reassess him – I’m one of those readers who stopped reading the X-books eventually after Claremont left, but not before I had read quite a few stories that he wrote, so I incorrectly associate him with the negativity I perceive with that time – and he seems like a decent human being. As with the other artists in the book, DeFalco spends too much time talking about how they work and got into comics when talking to Chris Bachalo, but the interviews with Grant Morrison and Mark Millar make up for this, and Millar isn’t in hyper self-promotion mode so he makes some decent points for a change. As a whole, the book is an oddity, but it is a sufficiently interesting oddity to warrant a purchase for a former X-fan like myself.

Notes On A Film: X-Men: First Class

It’s been nearly two weeks since I saw X-Men: First Class, which is perhaps an indication of the conflict I’ve had in compiling my thought about it. Part of it is to do with my years of reading the Chris Claremont X-Men, part of it is some parts of the film itself, and another part of it is the general reaction to the film in the press. To sum up, if you don’t want to read my jumbled ramblings: it is a generally good film, with some very good bits, but it’s not great (despite what current X-Factor writer Peter David might think), mostly due to various problems with the story.

Let’s start with the good stuff. Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are great as Magneto and Charles Xavier respectively. Fassbender is cool and tough as the spy-with-superpowers going after Nazis (very James Bond, but even cooler); McAvoy is charming, funny (he gets some good lines) and has the right sense of optimism and amazement in mutant powers. Together, their relationship is the beating heart of the film and it would have been great to see the entire film devoted to them alone.

The film is rather groovy. The reference to Bond is appropriate, not just the 1960s setting: the clothes, the production design, the globetrotting (Oxford, Argentina, Russia, Cuba), Sebastian Shaw as a classic Bond villain – the various secret headquarters (the submarine is a particularly nice touch), the cool hench-people and a silly plot to destroy the world. Everyone looks good, although the female attire perhaps goes too far, and there is a nice feeling of historical authenticity, even with the unfortunate attitude towards women. The action is good as well – the scene with Magneto in Argentina was particularly badass – and it flows at a good pace. And three cheers for not being in 3D.

Can I just say: greatest cameo ever, even if it doesn’t make complete sense. I laughed out loud, I’m not afraid to admit.

There are lots of nice touches, and the film makes sure it fits well with the first two X-Men films (Bryan Singer, producer on this film, seems to have a thing about making a new film based on only the first two films in a series, if this and Superman Returns are anything to go by) – the relationships between various characters, the development of Cerebro, the Blackbird, showing how Xavier ended up in a wheelchair, Magneto’s helmet. It is also unashamedly comic booky – Banshee flies on his stretchy wing things, the CGI visualisation of Shaw’s absorption of energy, Emma Frost’s diamond form, Darwin visibly mutating to display his adaptive power, the costumes, Magneto raising a submarine from the sea, the whirlwind powers of Shaw henchman Riptide (although he’s not named in the film, or even speak).

Time to talk about some of the things that weren’t so good. Although I enjoyed the presence of so many characters from the X-Men universe (apart from those mentioned, the film has Havok, Beast, Mystique, Angel, Azazel, Moira MacTaggart [albeit an American CIA agent instead of a Scottish doctor]), there are too many characters in the film. If it had been more about Xavier and Magneto, even if they were facing against Shaw on their own and realising that a team is needed, it would have been a tighter narrative. Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman do a great job of including all the characters and giving their moments, but it diffuses the story and loses focus.

The story itself, with an epic scale that revolves around the Cuban missile crisis, seemed implausible – even with a telepath, I couldn’t see how one man could influence the specific individuals to bring the world to the brink of war. It’s a classic Bond villain plot, with the big idea with a stupid reason, but that shouldn’t be an excuse.

The large cast means that few of the cast stand out. January Jones is a non-entity as Emma Frost – bland, looking very uncomfortable in the costume, and I really don’t like the diamond form (I didn’t like it when God-of-all-comics Grant Morrison introduced it and I like it even less here, where it looks silly). Riptide is a pointless appendage in the film; it’s like he was only kept around for precipitating the final action sequence. The actors playing Havok, Banshee, Darwin and Angel don’t make an impact (Angel is played by Zoe Kravitz, the daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, so she knows something about good genetics), and I feel sorry for Jason Flemyng for such a non-role as Azazel. Jennifer Lawrence, who was so good in Winter’s Bone, is fine as the young Mystique but seems flat here. Kevin Bacon doesn’t really work as Shaw – he doesn’t bring the menace necessary for the role.

The biggest problem I had was the inadvertent racism. Darwin, a black man, is the first die in the film. Not only that but he goes out in such a lame way – he is a character whose power is to adapt to any danger, but he is killed by Shaw putting energy in his mouth (Ed Brubaker, his creator, must be a little upset about that). In the same scene, the only character in the proto-X-Men to turn evil is the only black woman. I’m not saying that, to address the years of racism inflicted upon black people, all black characters in film should be good guys and not die; however, in a film that is an allegory for racism and is filled with nearly all white characters, the filmmakers made a huge error in their uncalculated use of Darwin and Angel.

The other things that niggled were minor: the hands-as-feet mutation of Hank McCoy was very silly; Riptide having whirlwinds coming out of his hands looked very stupid for some reason; the lack of sense behind Emma Frost’s diamond form; I don’t like that Sebastian Shaw is one of the first mutants in the film continuity, or that Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summer is not the first pupil of Xavier, but the continuity of the Fox X-Men films is quite messy anyway (e.g. the age of Xavier in this film and Wolverine: Origins, or the presence of various versions of Cyclops and Emma Frost in that film), so I guess I should get over myself. The film also suffers from the ‘more characters means a better superhero film’ problem of late (e.g. Spider-Man 3, or Wolverine: Origins, which seemed counterintuitive when examining the story of a loner hero). These niggles also extend to the promotion of the film – the original teaser trailer was a terrible indication of the film and the terrible Photoshopping of the posters are an embarrassment. However, the film is fun and worth a watch overall, even if Thor is still the current leader for best comic book superhero film of 2011.

Rating: DVD

[Explanation of my updated film rating system]