The Mutants: Act One, the American Experiment (Part 2)

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention!”

~William Shakespeare, Henry V

I do not recall my initial encounter with the X-Men, though I remember the comics readily enough.  I had an edition of the first dozen or so issues, in black and white, over which I spent hours poring as a child.  This was the era of my life when the act of reading was a newness to me, though I hasten to note that this was not so with literature; Mom had been reading to me since infancy, and I like to think that I had a somewhat sophisticated literary appreciation by the age of ten.  But reading to myself?  Now there’s a different story.  Without deviating overmuch into self-indulgent autobiography, I was not a reader until this late stage.  There was never a professional diagnosis, nor is there any real consensus between my parents as to my deficiency, apart from “I wasn’t ready.”  The story of how I did finally arrive at reading letters myself is for another time; let it here suffice to justify my early and dear love for comic books; that is, for pictorial narrative.  

My earliest comics (if you’ll forgive the appearance of pretension) were Franco-Belgian: Yakari and the White Buffalo was a gift from my paternal grandmother, and the peerless Adventures of Tintin were discovered in waste bins at my Dad’s used-book warehouse.  Of Asterix the Gaul I’ve no original memory except for a life-size cutout or mural at a mini-golf circuit someplace in Europe when I was four or five; apart from that non-sequitur observation, the little gallic warrior has always been around someplace.  Add to this lineup editions of Calvin and Hobbes, The X-Men, and The Fantastic Four, and you have what a selective memory places as the foundation for my (graphic-novel) literary frame of reference.

Comic books were a sort of freedom to me.  While it was agony to puzzle over why any sensible person would like to see Spot run or care to know what Jane thought about it, comics were there for the interpreting; one could very easily follow Spot’s progress, though what he and Jane were up to was anyone’s guess.  Perhaps that was part of the fun.  One needn’t know why Asterix needed to rescue Getafix before the centurion Crismus Bonus wrung from him the secret to the magic potion; one had only to look at a series of pictures depicting a venerable druid spooning out samples from a cauldron, the super-enhanced Gauls beating the Romans senseless, the ruffled Roman leadership with their heads together and conniving expressions upon their faces, a plot hatched to capture the druid (who expressed his displeasure through what we would today label “rage emojis”), and the distressed Gauls agonizing over a nearly empty cauldron.  The rest of the comic dealt with Asterix enacting his brilliant rescue plan.  In short, the story told itself, the word bubbles just noises that made clear what the images first heavily implied.

This was all predicated, of course, upon attention to detail, flow, and (above all) patience on the part of authors and illustrators, the sort of care taken by Japanese manga-ka today—in my experience best exemplified by the gifted Tite Kubo.  (As an aside, I first “read” Kubo’s internationally famous Bleach in the original Japanese, which is to say, I reverted to my pre-literate days and interpreted the whole story thanks to his outstanding use of the visual medium; imagine then my horror upon flipping through an English edition years later to discover that, at least in translation, Kubo comes across as perhaps one of the worst prose authors I’ve ever encountered).  American comics, at least in the tradition of MARVEL's numerous titles, came from a different stock entirely, stemming maybe from the unusual method employed by the first creatives.  

Years having passed and my original collection nowhere to be found, I turned to the Penguin Classics X-Men (for such a thing happily exists, with forwards and series introductions and chapters chockablock full of literary analysis) and threw myself into the first issue: September, 1963.  The summer of ’63 concluded with the tenth anniversary of the Korean War armistice; troops had been in Vietnam for almost eight years; the Cuban Missile Crisis was not yet eleven months past.  “Surfin’ USA” (The Beach Boys) was competing with “Twist and Shout” (the Beatles); man would not set foot on the moon for another six years.  And in New York, Stan Lee had a dilemma.  His publisher cousin-in-law, Martin Goodman, wanted a new superhero team, and he wanted them fast.  Fast was something that Lee (his nom de plume, the real man being Stanley Lieber) certainly understood and had mastered in his two decades at the company (not yet branded MARVEL).  In the three years since the launch of The Fantastic Four, Lee and artist Jack Kirby (with the assistance of Lee’s brother Larry and artist Don Heck) had developed five different comic book heroes for their new universe, each with his own title, culminating in The Avengers in July of ’63.  

In a stroke of creative genius (it bears the sort of simplicity that one recognizes only in hindsight) Lee and Kirby made two key contributions to the superhero genre that differed from their rivals at DETECTIVE COMICS (DC).  The first was to conceive of their characters as flawed, mortal, subject to suspicion by those that they had sworn to protect, or even genuinely tempted to do evil; the second innovation was the shared universe.  To claim this as totally original would be to mislead: DC had already pioneered a composite world for their heroes with The Justice League, yet it must be stressed that they still adhered to the stand-alone episode—one needn’t bother which comic one read in a year, as each Superman or Batman issue was self-contained.  What Lee and Kirby developed was a new method for integrated storytelling: a self-contained episode that fed a longer story (linear) while also referencing and drawing upon material from adjacent titles (lateral).  This was innovation that drew a crowd, and crowds were another thing that Lee came to understand (to the sad detriment of several of his working relationships, it must be added).  Yet innovation may be accidental genius as often as is intent; Lee’s next creation would certainly be such.

After all, “Fantastic Four," “Iron Man,” or even “Thor” are self-explanatory; but what exactly (or even why) is an “exman”?

Juxtaposition Observed: Comparing Orthodoxy and Extreme Ownership

“This, then, is a king's materials and his tools to reign with: that he have his land well peopled; he must have prayer-men, and soldiers, and workmen.”~Alfred the Great, Anglo-Saxon Boethius

There are times when I suspect myself to be a cynical, bitter elitist.  Such has been the feeling while toiling through Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.  Had I to sum up the book in a sentence: “This could have been an email.”  The fault is likely my own, considering that I have only ever cracked the cover on three leadership books (the other two were Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last and Jim Mattis’s Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead) and in no case have I progressed beyond the first couple of chapters.  In some the narrative is plodding or the diction is amateur; in no case does the subject matter inspire interest.  But this time is the first that I can admit to having experienced an epiphany—though this happy circumstance has less to do Mr. Willink or Mr. Babin and everything to do with GK Chesterton.

For all that I have seen the light while reading Extreme Ownership (here my protestation shall be that I am reading it at the boss’s behest), it is safe to say that it is by far the least admirable of my trifold leadership library.  Where Sinek was uninspiring and Mattis condescending, Willink and Babin are so much fluff— excellent leadership principles bookended by protracted and redundant adventure stories alongside corporate-American business vignettes that showcase the authors executing verbal ju-jitsu on incompetent and immature vice presidents and CEOs, in prose that vacillates between inoffensively correct and inexplicably horrendous.  According to one of the effusive reviews quoted on the back cover, its author is “Rereading again, and this time I’m taking notes.”  My own marginal notes are in the vein of “Non sequitur,” “Useful observation but does not advance the theme,” and “Why is this paragraph here?  Either move to the top of the page or cut.”  At least Willink’s chapters offer some mild entertainment; one wishes that the editors had possessed courage enough to edit Babin’s contributions:

“Now, the two of us—the EOD operator and I—were in a hell of a tight spot.  The subdued Iraqi man and possible terrorist we were holding had not yet been searched, a situation that carried huge risks.  We needed to fall back and link up with the rest of our force.  Now, with a larger enemy force maneuvering on us with heavier firepower, the two of us were outnumbered and outgunned.  Finally, I desperately needed to resume my role as ground force commander, dispense with handling prisoners, and get back to my job of command and control for the assault force, our vehicles, and coordination with our distant supporting assets.  All this had to be accomplished immediately.”

As the kids used to say, I can’t even.

My friends and coworkers, being more generous readers than I, have lauded the work to me as tremendously useful while acknowledging its shortcomings; a assessment of “necessary evil” that accords with the more discerning reviews online that praise the intent without endorsing the faults.  In search of something positive to say, I am reminded of the maxim that common sense is not common; some people really do need to be taught what others have come to learn though effective mentorship and demanding fields of work.

But I was also struck by a realization: what some people prize as useful literature are predominantly works of leadership and mindset—the one to earn success and to make it out in one piece, the latter to survive the mental game—with some Sun Tzu and Thucydides thrown in for esoterica.  Yet as Willink and Babin themselves point out, we need first to believe in what we are about in order to justify the rest.  A marine officer told me once that the Corps is a religious organization: they have their saints and their holy days, their founding myths and sacred traditions and incantations.  The common parlance of their having “drunk the Cool-Aid” is to say that they truly believe.  

Which is where I believe that GK Chesterton has more to say about the matter than either Willink or Babin.

Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is something of a spiritual autobiography that bears resemblance to CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity in that these two set out a series of arguments for Christian faith from intellect and pagan tradition.  Where Lewis grounds his structure in humanity’s universal appeal to standards, Chesterton argues that fairytales teach children about reality.

Consider what Chesterton calls the Doctrine of Conditional Joy: “according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an ‘if.’ The note of the fairy utterance always is, ‘You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word “cow”’; or ‘You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion.’ The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden … the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”

He continues, “Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat … Remember, however, that to be breakable is not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, and it will not endure an instant; simply do not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on not doing something which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do. Now, the point here is that to me this did not seem unjust. If the miller's third son said to the fairy, ‘Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace,’ the other might fairly reply, ‘Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace.’ If Cinderella says, ‘How is it that I must leave the ball at twelve?’ her godmother might answer, ‘How is it that you are going there till twelve?’ … it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.”

These words sent me back to Lewis’s other work, The Abolition of Man, which begins with the assertion that a child’s earliest reading will lay the groundwork for the rest of his life, that the truths—whether actually truthful, or damnable lies from the pit of Hell—will become the foundation for the whole of his worldview.  

Then, from Lewis’s and Chesterton’s wholesome arguments I returned to the utilitarianism—wearisome Spartans!—of Sinek and Mattis, and Willink and Babin.  For shame that I should so bemoan their earnest contributions (or in the cases of Willink and Babin, at least their strident self-promotion) to the self-improvement of warriors, laborers, and teams struggling in the everyday labors of life.  And yet to what end, I wondered, do their readers labor?  For what titanic and awesome outcome do we each strive so, while employing principles that promise sunny successes?  Do we not have an equal or greater need of stories about the real world, more so than narratives on mindset and leadership?  While the one helps to keep a healthy head and the other shepherds the team to victory, it is stories that teach us why we should be doing any of that, and they teach us to love and to reverence that which we work towards or defend against.  I suppose that’s why Mattis, Willink, and Babin ground their principles in nests of contextually convenient war stories; yet it is somewhat difficult for me to relate to tales of SEAL teams in the distant Battle of Ramadi, much easier to learn from the selfless heroism of Sir Gawain, or even the simple devotion of Carrot Ironfoundersson.

As Chesterton mystically observes, “I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.”