At 100 Miles Per Hour (Superman: Red Son)

A Charity Commission for Jake

TL;DR: Mark Millar Licks Goats

My copy of Superman: Red Son is placed on the bottom row of my first bookcase. I’ve had this bookcase since I was a little kid. Red Son was not among the first comic book trades I ever owned (that would probably be various Simpsons comics). But I order the majority of comics I own by when I got them. The placement of Red Son is directly underneath my copy of Nimona and I first read it around the time I discovered Hamish Steele via the web comic series Doctor Who Regenerated. I got it on a trip to a college in Michigan for a week long seminar. I had just concluded my junior year of High School. The year was 2012. We were riding on the train and I had decided not to bring my computer or iPod (I would not get an iPhone until 2013) for reasons I do not fully remember.

At the right end of the shelf lies one of the first Superhero comics I ever owned: Spider-Man: Reign. I got the comic for Christmas from my Aunt Kathy, along with Spider-Man: The Other and Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America. Of the three comics, Reign is the only one I still own. The comic is a bit of a hot mess, but then I’ve always been attracted to those. Among its major issues, the story needed another issue (or to have its four issues be longer) to allow it to truly breathe. Ostensibly, it’s a riff on The Dark Knight Returns (right down to having one of its characters be named Miller Jansen). However, as the narrative goes on, the Miller influence peels away like a mask made of flesh and reveals itself to be a story about self-loathing, healing, and heroic terrorism. One notable part the comic is famous for is the notion that Spider-Man killed his wife with radioactive fluids. However, the truth of the matter is more complicated. It’s a lie. One of those mad lies you tell yourself when you’re grieving to place the blame of the act onto you and only you. The kind that fall apart once you actually say them aloud. So you just internalize it as a cudgel to hurt yourself. Because moving on means leaving them behind.

On the left end lies All Star Superman. I got it for my 13^th birthday a few years before owning Red Son. It acts as a bookend to the shelf to hold the other books. Earlier today, May 8, 2020, El Sandifer continued her poll for the best work by the main five writers of her series Last War in Albion consisting of Grant Morrison, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Kieron Gillen. Of the two polls she released today, the one she made the hardest case for was between All Star Superman and From Hell. I voted for the latter, but more importantly was her case for the Moore comic, in particular, “Its wandering, looping sense of unfocused comprehensiveness informs everything I do. The idea that you can make an argument by implication, and more to the point that there are insights you can only get by sketching around a thing until it appears in the negative space.”

The book right next to Red Son, on its right, is Nextwave: Agents of HATE. It was among the books I got on that trip to Michigan (along with six others). Shortly before I began writing this article, I had a conversation with comics critic and internet friend Ritesh Babu, wherein we talked about late period creators. It began with Grant Morrison noting that he only has 12 years left to live and how he’s writing like he doesn’t have anything to lose. It evolved into a conversation about late period works of the old guard, Moore leaving the game, Gaiman being Gaiman, Ennis moving to TKO. But eventually, we hit upon Warren Ellis. Recently, Ellis attempted to create his own imprint where he could publish works. It failed due to the recent plague that’s been going around. He seems disheartened by his career, calling it middling. We speculated on the reasons for the reaction, pondering if he’s in a mood and what the context of Ellis’ success and influence within the medium truly was. Perhaps the most telling part of the conversation was when Ritesh noted, “it is arguable that most of the impact he did have, especially via The Authority, Mark Millar stole and warped into his own terribly perverse reduction (esp via Ultimates) leading to Nextwave, where in Ellis can only laugh at how things are.”

To Red Son’s left is a copy of Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine, but the more interesting comic (also purchased in that period) is Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery. The relationship between Grant Morrison and Mark Millar is perhaps among the most interesting in the history of the comics medium, certainly moreso than Morrison and Moore (which typically devolves into the banal argument about whether comics should be deconstructed or reconstructed made by people who think those words mean “Dark” and “light” and that they are the epitome of those ideas when both have done work in the other field). Initially, Millar and Morrison had what could be called a mentor student relationship (what Morrison currently has with Gerard Way, minus the shipping). However, sometime around the release of Red Son, they had a falling out such that, as Morrison put it in an interview, “he destroyed my faith in human fucking nature.” The circumstances for such a reaction are largely up to speculation, though many suspect that it has to do with Morrison not getting credit for work done on the Authority and Red Son. It has been widely reported that the ending of Red Son comes from Morrison. I have my own suspicions that I don’t feel comfortable making due to it involving two people I do not know. Though it’s telling that Morrison had further still to fall…

Four books to Red Son’s right is Marvel 1602. It (along with Batman: Detective no. 27 and the hardcover version of the Venom arc from Ultimate Spider-Man) was among the first comics I ever read. Not in the sense of flipping through the pages without really paying attention to the words. But actually reading the stories within. And the worlds they implied were fascinating, delightful, and fun. In the years since, I’ve cooled on 1602, but I still owe it for getting me into the comic book medium. To show its wide application. In High School, I tried to pitch the medium to an anime club I wasn’t a part of. (I could tell they didn’t want me there). In my pitch, I tried to play the “comics aren’t just for kids” game as I was a tad bit embarrassed by my comics fandom. I highlighted the grotesque violence comics could provide, noting the sex and gore of the medium. I didn’t make a good case for it. Yes, there’s sex and gore in comics, but that’s not all comics are. There’s also romance and strangeness, and grids and lettering, and so much more. Among the comics I was pitching was Superman: Red Son.

Four books to the left is the final volume of Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX run. It tells the story of an old man, broken by tragedy and the cruelty he spread. It tells of how he spent the last days, fighting an intelligent bald man with contempt in his eyes living in a loveless marriage to a woman he barely sees. It’s a violent brutal end, with the titular character dying the way he lived. It ends on a seemingly triumphant note with the legacy of the Punisher being more violence and cruelty upon the world. A vicious cycle of horror and monstrosity that will never come to an end. The legacy of the cold war from which Frank Castle sprung from infects the world around it, creating a crueler world indeed. The war will never end. It will just go on and on and on until even the heat death of the universe can’t stop it.