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Popular Culture Review
Madison Avenue partition out the demographics that directs their products to these
divergent groups, (b) The American Heritage Dictionary\ 3rd edition, has these two
entries for the word “geek”: (n) slang. (1) An odd or ridiculous person; (2) A carnival
performer who se show consists o f bizarre acts, such as biting the head o ff a live chicken.
The A HD cites the Low German gek — “fool” as (perhaps) the root word.
2 As an art form, comics have had their shares o f ups and downs: the booming years o f
the 40s the threat o f extinction in the 50s and the rebirth o f the superhero in the 60s
(exemplified by the Marvel brand o f hero: the superpowers are not part o f the character’s
birthright; rather, the hero has somehow accidentally been transformed through some sort
o f genetic mutation).
In his discussion with Robert Bimbaum, Lethem claims that The Fortress o f Solitude,
rather than being “a break with what proceeded it, . . . is the opposite. Fortress is the
culmination o f what I have being doing to that point. It recapitulates almost every interest
and every concern o f the early books, and utilizes all the tools I’d accumulated, all the
methods and motifs I had been exploring and gathering.” Indeed, he adds, “Precisely
because I've now discharged a lot o f my original material by exploring it in this immense
fiction— I’m not bloody likely to need to transpose childhood trauma into Marvel comics
again— for perhaps the rest o f my life.”
4 To those titles he could have added Chabon’s own 1995 novel. The Wonder Boys,
which makes an off-hand and sly reference to Marvel's iconoclastic (and in a sense,
seminal) comic. The Fantastic Four in such a way that allows the novel reader (who may
have come o f age reading comics) a moment o f gentle self reflection.
5 In The Wonder Boys, for example, Chabon’s protagonist, Grady Tripp, drives up to
“The Baxter Building” to pick up his third wife, Emily. She works in the building as a
“copywriter for an advertising agen cy.. . . Richards, Reed and Associates ” (27). Through
the agency o f Tripp’s narration we learn that Susan and Ben are two o f her friends, and
they also work at Richards, Reed and Associates . On this stormy day, though. Emily does
not emerge from the building and Tripp is forced to admit that she has “walked out on
their marriage” (28) and the novel and the narrative moves on from there.
It is a quiet reference— there are no bells and whistles— and one that is made and then
passes from the narrative without incident or examination. But for all o f those who were
fans o f The Fantastic Four after their appearance in 1963 would recognize Chabon’s
coincidental “play” o f names; for they ring a bell. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Susan
Storm (the Invisible Girl), and Ben Grimm (The Thing) were three o f the four members
o f the most incredible fighting team o f all time. Only Sue’s younger brother. Johnny
Storm (The Torch) is missing.
6 There are novels that have a superhero as the central character— for example, De Haven
has just published a remarkable novel titled I t ’s Superman which retells the Superman
legend in a new and innovative way. In De Haven’s novel Superman, per se, is a
peripheral character. The novel’s focus is on Clark who, growing up in the 1930s, is
shaped by the Depression and the social injustice he sees and experiences. Such a reading
amplifies and forces us to critique the meaning o f a phrase as “Truth, Justice, and the
American Way.”
7 O f course, Michael Chabon’s character’s fictional creation— The Escapist— has in time
taken on a life o f its own. On the Captain Comics web site we can find this note: