Let’s talk for a moment about the mercy bullet.
Every so often, in the course of his typical spiderly duties, there was a time when Peter Parker would occasionally run into a gentleman by the name of The Punisher. The Punisher was engaged in a one-man war on crime; he scoffed at the System and the Man and his Rules and his Hygiene. The Punisher lived only for sleeping in a van and mowing down perps. He was a perp landscaper.
He just didn’t want to hurt any of them.
Spider-Man would hear gunshots, and he would dutifully swing blindly through a window directly into the crossfire. (Spider-sense makes a man cocky.) And there inside the window would be The Punisher, making decorative topiary out of perps with the uzis in each of his hands spraying wildly. Before him, dozens of men would lie in eerily still, indistinct heaps. This was usually when someone would survey the scene and say, “Thank goodness those were only mercy bullets!”
What were they made out of, I wonder? He was firing sharpened Tylenol PMs into people’s necks, wasn’t he? The Punisher never really wanted to get into it. I like to imagine he made up mercy bullets the way parents made up that farm they sent your old childhood dog to. It was just easier than telling Spider-Man the truth. “The mobsters…? Oh, the mobsters are sleeping. I used special sleepy bullets. In their filthy heads.”
This would happen all the time. In the middle of machine gun massacres that left every wall in the room looking like a cheese grater, someone would all but look at the reader and say, “Boy howdy, it is a good thing these bullets do not hurt people.” You could almost hear the music stop.
If none of this rings a bell, congratulations. You started reading recently, during the actual golden age of comics.
The longbox owning community gets a bad rap when it comes to the past, specifically our supposed wish to live in it. Whenever people get to talking about superhero comics, it’s usually only a matter of time before someone chimes in that the readership is doing nothing more than trying to trap 1985 in amber and recapture the same old stories they read when they were eleven. I humbly submit to you that no one involved in that discussion has taken a look at those stories in a while. This is the best time in American history to be a comic book reader.
An iPad made its way into my house a few weeks ago, and having it around lit a fire under me. I am finally reading all the compilations of old comics that I have been sitting on for years. I mainlined about fifty issues of Amazing Spider-Man and Avengers this past week. I’m really enjoying them; I would not change a thing about them; I cannot wait to read the next one; I would not want comics to be written this way again for a million, million dollars and a cave full of Batmobiles.
When is the last time you heard the phrase “playing possum,” gentle reader? Well, I should say “read the phrase”; has any earthling ever said it out loud in conversation? The villain delivers a crushing blow to the hero, and he/she crumples in a heap. The villain cries, “Triumphant at last! Now, to saunter over to the body with my guard down and steal his Swatch!” Only then does the hero spring up and announce, “Nice try, Doctor Dimwit! I was only playing possum to get you to walk over here! I made it convincing by actually being hit by the 7,000 volts you blasted me with! Anyway, facepunch!” In 1983, Spider-Man does this on average roughly three times per issue.
Every sentence in the entire book ended in an exclamation point, by the way..
Speaking of words never heard spoken aloud, let’s talk for a moment about "eldritch." I have never heard or seen this word in any context outside of comics, but thanks to 1979’s Youth Magicks Awareness Act, it was federally mandated to be said by at least one character in every Marvel comic for about eight years, usually in casual conversation around the breakfast table or laundry room.
Conversational oratory was a problem in general. The panel on the left is from an issue of ROM. That cyborg is not prepping for the SATs; she is chilling with her bros. Today, that word balloon would read, “Seriously, you guys. Back to work.” You may prefer the original version. I maintain that not even robots from another planet talk like that. That’s just one reason why I feel lucky to be alive in 2011. I appreciate living in a time when characters sound like real people.
I do sort of miss people from other countries blurting things out in their native tongues at every opportunity.
“Unglaublich!”
“I still do not know what that means, tovarisch.”
“I still do not know what that means, mein freund.”
ESL classes were not offered at Xavier’s.
Every so often, there used to be a scene when Peter Parker would walk past a street vendor selling Spider-Man merchandise and think, “Everyone is making a buck off of Spider-Man but me,” and through the wisp-thin veil you could make out the silhouette of the writer balling up a work-for-hire contract in his fist. “My subtext-sense is tingling… but why?” Now, we live in an era when creator-owned work is more prominent in the industry than perhaps it has ever been. Creators may still find themselves getting taken advantage of, but people seem to know the score now better than they ever have. It's always nice to be able to read a comic without a twinge of sadness for the people who made it, I find.
And their books are easier to get than ever, too. I never read these old Spider-Man issues because the back issues bins in 1987 were expensive and full of gaps. (There has to be a better way to phrase that. A box that’s full of absence sounds like a John Lennon lyric.) Today, I have 400 of them on a single device that weighs less than some trades. Almost everything that isn’t digital is reprinted; almost everything that isn’t reprinted is on eBay. I wish I could go back in time and tell 1987 Me, “Relax. No need to bike two miles with your hard-earned allowance to track down the issue where Jonah hires X-Factor to hunt Spider-Man down. You’ll have it all eventually. Besides, it’s only going to get better from here. Assuming you skip the nineties.”
Jim Mroczkowski has the joy joy joy joy down in his heart.
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Amazing article as always and spot on. Remember when Batman called everyone a “punk?” One thing I do miss is people calling other people “suckas”
I also should have mentioned the tendency for men in their twenties referring to their peers as “mister.” “Not so fast, mister.”
Great article, really enjoyed this one. As much as I love reading these old comics, I have to agree.
@Jimski oh man, we should bring that back
@Jimski Spider-Man and the Human torch did that a whole whole lot. Lots of mistering when those two are around.
heh. I think there are two main things to notice about old comics that new comics do better:
1. Trust the art. The writers back then just didn’t realize that the pictures did most of the work for them. You don’t need to have Spidey yell “Ouch! That guy hit me in the breadbasket!” when we can, in fact, see that that guy just hit Spidey in the breadbasket.
2. Summary of last issue! It seemed like every issue spent at least a couple pages catching the reader up. I guess that was important back then, when any issue could be a reader’s first, but I don’t think it’s a thing any more.
People complain about old comics having more story, but really if you cut out unnecessary dialogue, redundant narration, and plot synopsis, you wouldn’t be left with a whole lot.
That last line reminds me of something I was thinking of this morning. We all bemoan the nineties. That longbox full of Deathmate:Black sitting lonely and unloved in the back room of the local comic shop doesn’t lie. Now we laugh at Knightfall, Death of Superman, Maximum Carnage, Fatal Attractions, grim and gritty, Azbats, Daredevil armor, foil die cut gatefold glow in the dark covers, and oh god, the pain, the pain. I just wonder what it’s going to be, 16 years from today, that we as comic book fans will sit here and look back on, saying “DAMN, the 2010’s SUCKED.”
I couln’t agree more, the greatest thing going on in comics currently is the range of great characters. Characters that have sucked for decades are now being recast in to a whole new life and I’m enjoying characters I’d never even given a second glance to 15 years ago.
Unglaublich means Unbelievable.
Tavorisch is not a German word but could mean Tavorianish. The ending …isch is used the same way in Germane as the ending …ish in English.
Mein Freund means My Friend.
“Tovarisch” is Russian for “friend”, Colossus used to say it frequently in Uncanny X-Men in the 80’s
All that said – most of the great characters that we still love today were all created back in the ’60s and ’70s. Go through most any hero’s villains gallery and most of thost guys have first appearance issues in the single digits.
@Firevine Rapes N’ Resurrections: The Naughty Aughties Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Wasp Being Brutally Murdered… Twice.
Can’t wait til a litle kid enamoured with the Wasp on Avengers Earth’s Mighties Heroes and Ultimate Spider-Man picks up Ultimatum.
@flakbait By the time I finished my ROMathon, I was skipping the caption boxes entirely without suffering any ill effects. I’m getting there with Spider-Man now.
Old comics are a lot like childhood: Better as a memory.
@RapidEyeMovement Or good to read now, depending on your point of view and tastes and abolity to view media in the context of when it was created. I love reading old comics.
“If none of this rings a bell, congratulations. You started reading recently, during the actual golden age of comics.“
I say yes to this. I vote to name the current “age”, the rennaissance.
I was just thinking something along these lines just the other day.
All those misters and breadbaskets gave comics of the old days their charm. Call me nostalgic, but the earliest flirtations between Betty Brant and Peter Parker, along with Peter’s special kind of teenage angst have a unique appeal.
Preach! This truly is the platinum age of comics.
Things are NOT better than ever if there isn’t a ROM comic on the stands. However, if DNA can bring him back in Annihilation, I will buy every copy at my store.
@conor I agree that one must keep the mindset of the times, and I also enjoy reading old comics. But, as I believe is the point of this article, they are hardly perfect.
Fun piece, and yes, there are loads of great books today, but it’s not like today’s comics don’t have their cliches – on-camera reporters giving us infodumps, narration by Tweet, ‘the HELL?’ …
As for all the exclamation marks, wasn’t that to do with the marriage of old-style printing and paper stock that meant full stops (periods, in US-speak) would vanish? So exclams would indicate the end of a sentence (as well as the occasional actual exclamatory remark).
yeah but back in the day there was no direct market and comic shops with creepy employees. The innocent fun of buying a newsprint floppy off a spinner rack at the drug store with a pocket full of change is gone forever and thats a sad thing.
@RapidEyeMovement That seems counter to your old comics are “better as a memory.” I don’t think old comics are perfect; I don’t think any comic era is perfect.
@conor I was just speaking in general terms. I’m sure in 20 years, today’s comics will be remembered with a blanket fondess. Or even a blanket hatred, if today’s internet commenters are any indication.
Comics in “the old days” were both good and bad. Comics today are both good and bad. I’m just saying that nostalgia tends to block out the bad.