Dr. Fate and the Baleful Exposition

A few weeks ago, I picked up a complete run of Wanted: The World's Most Dangerous Villains, a 70s reprint series from DC that includes some choice Golden Age stories from DC, Fawcett, and Quality.

Today's story is from Wanted #3, a Dr. Fate story from More Fun Comics #65, 1941.

You'll all have seen criticism of comics that mocks narrative caption, dialog, and panel action that all recapitulate each other. It's redundant, a failure of craft, thoroughly risible. It's criticism like this, often from prominent editors and creators, that has forbidden the narrative caption from most modern comics, removing a powerful tool for exposition from the toolbox, making it harder for writers to reach an adequate level of craft. And for what? A joke! A gag that is rare, at most, in the wild, universally recognized as poor craft that no one would deliberately imitate.

But just because it's rare, or recognizable as poor craft, doesn't mean that it's not out there.

I'm not sure that H.P. Lovecraft envisioned the Deep Ones of "The Shadow over Innsmouth" as based on magenta groupers, but artist Howard Sherman does a pretty sweet job otherwise. In particular, I think Sherman was his own letterer, and the Dr. Fate lettering is pretty awesome, with the most prominent feature being the long medial bar on E's and F's. The same cannot quite be said of writer Gardner Fox, however. because of this:

I think what Fox is trying to convey to the reader in these two panels is that Dr. Fate has seen something, and that that something is a fish-man, and that the fish-man has his genesis in Nyarl-Amen. I'm not sure, though.

So, y'know. Thanks, Fox. Thanks for taking clear storytelling far enough to ensure a backlash.

Now, as for dealing with the fish-men's attempt to conquer Pearl Harbor, Dr. Fate is fully prepared:

When broiler grouper pales on the palate, Dr. Fate is ready with a quick change-up, to satisfy the superhero imperative:

That's right: Even Dr. Fate does puncheminnaface.

After destroying the entire fish-man civilization, he leaves us with a final thought:

I'm not sure eerie evil poses many threats that aren't weird, or that there are many weird threats that come from mundane evil, but in any case, Dr. Fate knows his purpose. No existential angst for this superhero!

All images © DC Comics; art by Howard Sherman, words by Gardner Fox. Fair use asserted.

Posted by Greg at April 27, 2008 2:42 PM