I've drifted away from comics in the past couple of years. Not, I hasten to add, because I think I've outgrown them, or because modern comics suck, but--primarily--for financial reasons. I can get a paperback for the same price as two or three comics, and the paperback will entertain me longer and better than those comics. I still buy the occasional trade and individual issues of things like Northlanders and Suburban Glamour, but I probably spent $20, total, on individual Marvel and DC issues last year.
And yet my love for superhero comics hasn't really gone anywhere, and I still remember any number of stories, story arcs, and creator runs with great fondness. So I thought I'd write about some of my favorite moments from them--or, rather, some of my favorite Neat Moments.
I know that the following goes against the premise of the site--what I'm about to write isn't howling or curmudgeonly--but I thought it might be enjoyable (for me, if nobody else) to write about some Neat Moments of comics stories past. And, well, the blogosphere can be oppressively negative, sometimes, and some simple celebration of things that deserve it isn't out of order.
When I say "Neat Moments," I mean just that a neat moment. It's not an entire story or even a scene, just an individual moment of one or two panel, but one or two panels which were particularly well-done in some respect, whether because of good writing, a skillful manipulation of sentiment, a loving shout-out to continuity, or because of an exhibition of true heroism.
This time, I'm thinking of Grimjack. Grimjack, created by the ever-reliable John Ostrander and Tim Truman, is an aging adventurer, bodyguard, private eye and mercenary who works in the pan-dimensional city of Cynosure. Like most series, Grimjack had its high and low points, and the substitution of Tom Mandrake for Truman near the climax of the Dancer storyline reduced what should have been a triumph to something merely enjoyable.
But Grimjack had one indisputable Neat Moment. It occurs in Grimjack #2 (September 1984), when a child approaches Grimjack, a.k.a. John Gaunt. The child's mother is sick, and the family is poor, so the father has volunteered to fight in a death match as a way to win some money. The child hires Gaunt to save his father.
The Neat Moment comes in the hiring. The child hires Gaunt for one decicred. The decicred is the smallest coin in Cynosure, but it's all the child has. Gaunt's response to this?
"Nobody'd ever offered their entire bankroll before. It made me feel overpaid."
Some of you might know that I'm writing an encyclopedia of pulp heroes, and that I've written an encyclopedia of Golden Age (1900-1945) detectives. I've read more detective novels from that era, and more pulp detective stories, than...well, false modesty aside, I've read more pulp stories than anybody on Earth, including pulp detective stories.
The Neat Moment I described above? Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, were they alive to read it, would be nodding their heads and wishing they'd written it. Robert Leslie Bellem (creator of Dan Turner, the quintessential pulp Hollywood detective) and Davis Dresser (creator of Michael Shayne) would tip their hats to Ostrander for that Moment. It's pure hardboiled (on the sentimental end of the hardboiled spectrum, rather than the psychotic)--precise, not a word wasted or misplaced or badly chosen, and it tells us so much about Gaunt as well as making us smile.
It's a Neat Moment.
(I'll try to do one of these a week).
Posted by Jess Nevins at May 12, 2008 10:31 PM
My favourite line in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is something similar. The villagers hiring Chris tell him they're offering him everything they have, and he says "I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything".
Good stuff. I read the title and immediately remembered the scene. Tim Truman does some great waifs, doesn't he?
Uncanny X-Men #10something: Magneto's got the X-Men captured and locked up in chairs that don't just neutralize their powers but sap most of their strength and coordination, too. Ororo manages to flip her headpiece off and try picking her handcuffs. It doesn't work. The ensuing couple of panels' art and narration capture her frustration, and her determination within that angry grief, linger with me yet. In fact, when I first developed these immune problems a few years later, those couple of pages were ones I sometimes pointed to so I could say "It feels like this, pretty much."
It's a neat moment.
BobH--Ah...yes. That may have been an inspiration for it.
Bruce--I remember that scene as well. I've got another Claremont moment in mind to write about, from the years when I really enjoyed what he wrote.
It's like that line from "My Fair Lady" (uncertain if it's in the original "Pygmalion"), when Eliza offers to pay no more than a "shillin'" for lessons from Higgins:
"You know, Pickering, if you think of a shilling -- not as a simple shilling -- but as a percentage of this girl's income, it works out as fully equivalent of, uh, 60 or 70 pounds
from a millionaire. By George, it's enormous! It's the biggest offer I ever had!"
Terence: That is from Shaw's Pygmalion, your last two sentences virtually word for word.
As for the line in The Magnificent Seven, I'm not sure how to check quickly, but that would have very easily fit into Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.
Jess is right--it's a very powerful sentiment.
Ah, yes, well, Jess, in the spirit -- if not the actual time of Victorian literature, Shaw's "Pygmalion" has the following exchange:
HIGGINS [walking up and down the room, rattling his keys and his cash in his pockets] You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as a simple shilling, but as a percentage of this girl's income, it works out as fully equivalent to sixty or seventy guineas from a millionaire.
PICKERING. How so?
HIGGINS. Figure it out. A millionaire has about 150 pounds a day. She earns about half-a-crown.
LIZA [haughtily] Who told you I only--
HIGGINS [continuing] She offers me two-fifths of her day's income for a lesson. Two-fifths of a millionaire's income for a day would be somewhere about 60 pounds. It's handsome. By George, it's enormous! it's the biggest offer I ever had.
Of course, this is more familiar from "My Fair Lady," but still...
I'd forgotten (if I'd ever noticed it before) about the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady comment.
Nonetheless, I think Ostrander's is the superior, not least because (comics partaking as much of poetry as prose, given the space restrictions) it's more concise, more apt, and more lyrical.
I'll play against type here (and hopefully segue the discussion back onto comics) by acknowledging a relatively recent 'neat moment':
In Ross, Krueger and Braithwaite's superb 'Justice' (I cannot remember which issue and I don't have them to hand):
Gorilla Grodd: "This alliance is a necessary evil."
Batman: "There are no necessary evils."
Actually, it's beyond neat.
The equivalent scene in SEVEN SAMURAI is a bit different, assuming the subtitles I saw it with are accurate. There the lead samurai takes the job when it's pointed out to him that the villagers are feeding him rice while eating millet themselves. So the payoff line would be "I won't waste your food", which doesn't have much pizazz in English.
It's been bugging me all day why this sounded familiar. On the way home from work, it occurred to me: It's biblical. Mark 12:41-44 (or Luke 21:1-4) portrays Jesus and his disciples watching people giving money to the temple. Various people are giving lots of money, but then they notice a poor widow giving a penny. This is the greatest gift of all, Jesus points out, because although others gave larger amounts, the widow is the only one who gave everything.
Doug, I'm pretty sure Mark borrowed that bit from George Bernard Shaw.
I'm surprised nobody's yet brought up Mark 12:41-44.
Re: Mark.
I did not bring it up simply because that would be showing off, whereas bringing up Shaw is making fun of Jess, who should be expected to know the Victorian references rather than the Biblical ones. I make fun of Jess because prior to publication I gave him a signed copy of League of Extraordinary Gentleman vol. 2 #1, and he forgot about it.
Neat moment:
From my youth there was the one mentioned by Jess for sure. When I saw that the old Ostrander Grimjacks were being re-released, this was a scene that stood out in my mind. Fantastic.
But another one that stands in my mind from the time was when Claremont and Byrne finally took Wolverine out of the "I'm so crazy I'll cut yer tie in half when I am mad at you, bub" mode and made him into a man of mystery. Wolverine was talking about going out hunting and Ororo gets upset that he would take the life of an innocent animal. He points out to her in just enough words that it takes no skill ta kill and he just wants to sneak up on a critter and play tag.
Why this was great is that for the issues before that, the annoying canuck was just one "snikt" away from completely bothering me until those two reigned him in to someone more akin to Eastwood's "Man with no name" character who exuded some mystery and menace but kept his motivations and true feelings close to the vest. Honestly, I don't think there have been any writers since those two to get him right. This was a "neat moment" that redefined and realigned the character in a way that was great and eventually damning since no one since those two ever did him justice.
Neat moment (to me at the time, anyway). And if someone quotes a Bible verse with Jesus saying something close to this or muttering the word "Bub" I'll eat my hat.
My favorite neat moment is during Roger Stern's Masters of Evil story in Avengers 273-277. Hyde is toruring Jarvis and doing all sorts of evil stuff to break Captain America's spirit while Zemo is observing. Cap says something like, "I'll remember this, Hyde." Beats the living hell out of all the false bravado of so many characters. As Churchill would say, "In defeat, defiance."
God, there are so many great little moments I can think of that I'd never be able to list 'em all. One comes from JMS's Spider-Man run, when Spidey first meets the vampire Morlun. Their introduction to each other goes something like this:
Morlun: First, let me tell you I have no particular desire to see you dead.
Spidey: And already we have something in common!
Morlun: However, it is quite necessary.
Spidey:...oh.
Just...classic.
OK, this one's dealing with more obscure characters, but what the heck. When the then Kesels were doing Hawk & Dove, one issue had Uncle Sam guest star. And at one point, an extremely frustrated Hawk yells out "Damn the Constitution!" ... to which a perfectly characterized Uncle Sam replies "Son, them's fightin' words!".