Charlton Comics' BLUE BEETLE #5

Review by noted comics colorist Carl Gafford, reprinted with permission.

I had a rare opportunity one day while at Defiant to tell Steve Ditko how much I loved this particular issue of Blue Beetle and how I thought the story was THE BEST combination of philosophy and popular fiction I'd ever enjoyed.

Basically, the question (no pun intended) is what makes a hero? Can we reach for the stars, or must we grovel with the worms? Like in the conclusion of H.G. Wells' film THINGS TO COME, it's Everything or Nothing, The Universe or the Dust. Standards ARE hard to achieve -- that's why they're CALLED standards. Whether it's standards for athletic or intellectual excellence, or moral standards in today's do-you-own-thing morality, standards are goals that not all people achieve, but that doesn't mean that they should be lowered to democratize them for the masses.

In this story, a self-inflated art critic named Boris Ebar is accompanied by his posse of long-haired, maggot-infested hippie admirers at an art show in Hub City, and he's gushing in praise over a piece of art called "Our Man," depicting a poor old soul unable to attain lofty standards and therefore left behind to wallow in his own insecurities and unsuccessfullness.

Ebar: "Here is what I call OUR MAN! This anonymous work is a perfect example of art that reveals the true spirit of Man... Man as he really is. The entire form is nondescript... lacking the usual grotesque, heroic pose. The missing eyes, a profoundly human touch with which all may identify and which dramatizes Man's inevitable weaknesses. Notice, please, the touch of pure genius... the DELIBERATE LACK of a heart! The faculty that Man SHOULD obey! The closed hands, symbolizing Man's inability to solve or control the illusion we call existence. Yes, this is True Man... This is how we really are... no one can improve on it... or escape it! We can only accept... OUR MAN!"

To the hoity-toity art critic, this is REAL art, not like the hackneyed, old fashioned art that TV moderator Vic (Question) Sage and Ted (Blue Beetle) Kord and his girl friend Tracey admire: "The Unconquered," a statue trumpeting Man's strive for greatness.

Tracey and Ted walk in on Ebar's dissertation in the splash panel of page one. Tracey: "Ted, even if he means it as a joke, it's a disgusting appraisal of Man!"Ted: "He means it, Tracey...and he and a lot of others REALLY believe it!"

Including Hugo, one of the slackers there. Hugo thinks to himself: "It's true! That's exactly how I feel! Man is an incompetent nothing in a world of mystic terrors... all without meaning or purpose!"

Ebar spots TV newsman Vic Sage: "Ah, the famous Vic Sage. Surely you share my esthetic beliefs, the irrefutable logic that..."
Sage: "I'LL speak for myself! Your views and that thing belong on a junk heap! But it's perfect for all of you..."

Ebar is dumbstruck that his opinions would ever be questioned, and the dirty raggamuffins take umbridge at Sage's comments.

One loser: "How dare he attack Ebar or a truce work of art!"
Sage: "...perfect for self-admitted nothings who have nowhere to go in their world of nothing!"

Tracey, Ted and Vic then walk into another room filled with heroic, positive paintings and sculptures.

Tracey: "What a difference! The men who created these certainly thought well of Man and his world!"
Ted: "And of themselves, Tracey! They spent themselves on what they considered worthy of their time and abilities!"

But the dirty slackers don't see it that way.

Female Loser: "This pretty stuff gives me the creeps. They're trying to put us down!"
Vic replies: "My, my, it's so unfair, isn't it? You can't have what you want and wishing for it should be all the effort you need to get anything."

Then Hugo spots one particular statue and starts to go into a rage: "'The Unconquered.' I hate that statue! I hate heroes. I'll... I'll smash it!!"

Ted places himself between Hugo and the heroic piece of art. "Don't you dare lay a hand on that statue!"

After a brief threat of violence to destroy the statue, the losers' collective spines melt as Ted, Tracey and Vic stand together to defend the heroic art.

Ebar is indignant: "Sage, you owe me an apology! I'm a recognized art critic and you embarrassed me... and made me appear like a fool!"
Sage: "I owe you nothing! How you feel about your own evaluation of art is your business! Don't try to use me to foster your opinions!"

Tracey asks Ted: "Why are you staring at 'The Unconquered'?" Ted answers: "There's something about it! It signifies more to me than just a fine figure... something deeper... It's PROOF that Man is NOT helpless! Man can set a goal and achieve it. As the sculptor did with his statue, so can anyone else, but Man has to motivate himself!"

Hugo is also wrapped up in admiring a piece of sculpture, as he slinks back to the Our Man sculpture and thinks to himself: "We are like this statue! Man doesn't have the power to achieve anything! Man is a helpless speck in an unknowable universe ruled by strange forces that control Man's will and destiny! By himself, Man is nothing and can do NOTHING!!"

Life then imitates art when Hugo dons an "Our Man" suit he's based on the statue and sets out to wreck other, more conventional (and more successful) art. He's stopped by the Blue Beetle, but this only gives self-acclaimed geniuses like Ebar and the easily-led psuedo-intellectual elite crowd and their slacker audience a chance to extoll the plain man and excoriate the Blue Beetle for holding property values above the values of their "art."

((I wish I had the room to quote the pages of dialogue as Hugo justifies championing his inadequacies and how a fawning crowd of do-nothings take up his banner. As mere text on a screen, dialogue looks ponderous. Combine text with art, and you have the emotion and impact of comics.))

The debate soon becomes fodder around every office water cooler, and in one panel a shiftless office type (with a pronounced pot belly) takes up the cause: "It's better for Man to identify with weakness. It gives him a humble, truer perspective of Man."

His sniveling office mate agrees, but he sees one secretary angered by the conversation: "Yeah," he whines, "this rat race of always proving yourself is insane! It seems our Miss Efficiency doesn't agree!"

Darn right, she doesn't: "You want to pull a vicious switch! You sneer the best as unworthy so you have an excuse to remain as lousy as you are!" You tell 'em, sister.

Ted then decides to take this battle from the street to the museum, and sponsors a Heroic Art exhibit with Vic Sage agreeing to emcee. The affontery to place Heroic Art opposite the One True Path of Mediocrity gets the slacker crowd and Hugo aroused to suppress the positive art exhibit (apparently, freedom of speech is only for "politcally correct" art--Steve ahead of his time again), but they meet with resistance from the Blue Beetle, who snatches the costumed Hugo from the street for a battle on the rooftop, safely away from hurting anyone below.

When the Beetle starts to win, one of the mind-numbed slackers on the street grabs a rent-a-cop's pistol and starts firing at the Beetle. Sage spots him: "That self-made idiot! He's refused to use his mind for so long he has nothing to check his impulses!"

Sage disarms the loser: "Because you deliberately turned yourself into a mental cripple... that doesn't excuse your actions!" "Ow!" cries the loser. "What ya do that for? I'll kill..." But Sage cuts him off with an uppercut: "Since you won't think, I'll tell you! Your feelings don't determine anything! Especially the life of a human being!" "Who are you to tell me...OW!" wails the loser.

Meanwhile, Hugo has taken advantage of the Blue Beetle having to break off the fight and escapes through a window into the building (he's even a failure at being a failed hero for the masses), leaving his costume behind to inspire the rest of the hippie slackers to rise to new depths of unaccomplishment.

Back at his lab, Ted describes to Tracey how in the midst of the fight, he kept thinking of that earlier statue, "The Unconquered": "I was fighting for everything it stood for... to me! For the best in a man whatever it is, whatever it took to make that statue... whatever it takes to achieve anything worthwhile! It can only be done by struggling to succeed! 'Our Man' could only have won if I gave up... on what that statue stands for, for what it means to me!"

Unlike the downbeat ending to the first Question story in BB #1, where it seemed that no matter what the hero did, it had no effect on the world outside, THIS story ends in a classroom as two lazy students taunt their studious friend:

"You're crazy, Lou! You got to be a geinus or like the Blue Beetle to solve those problems. Give up like me and Huck! You'll pass anyway!" "No!" answers Lou. "If I give up, I'll never know! They can be done and I know I can do them! I know it!" BUT---you'll NEVER know if you never try, right, Louie?

The story continues in the Question back-up, as the snooty art critic Boris Ebar is back, now pedalling his doctrine of despair among the easily led who run Vic Sage's TV station. Meanwhile, Vic Sage has bought a different painting for his assistant Nora: one full of optimism and accomplishment (a painting that Ebar blasted in one of his "critiques"). Ebar shrinks from the sight of it like a vampire exposed to a crucifix. Still clinging to the darkness, Ebar hires two thugs to break into Nora's apartment and steal the painting.

Enter the Question, who sends the crooks running. Now knowing of Ebar's obsession against the painting, Vic has smoke-chemical images of it set off around Ebar until he finally does something to incriminate himself--attack Nora, in fact, to force her to destroy the painting. He draws a sword dagger out of his effete cane and threatens Nora.

"Please... don't force me," he whines. "Don't make me do it! I'll pay you...but destroy it!" She won't comply. "I'm not a hired accomplice to any crime!" she declares. "Any force will start from you! You want the painting destroyed... you alone will have to do it... if you can!" And she holds it out in front of him. Can he even do THAT MUCH on his own?

With his dagger in hand, Ebar stares at the painting, sweat pouring from his brow as the heroic, smiling face looms larger, ever larger... "I'll show you... Stop! Stop staring... Stop Accusing Me! I didn't mean to betray you," he says to the painting.

"You expect too much of me... I'm only human!" rants Ebar as the face surrounds him. "Why won't you let me lie to myself?" Ebar pleads. "Why do you keep making me see what I let myself become... STOP IT! I must destroy you...to destroy the proof of what I once wanted to be!"

He HAS to destroy it, because it exposes all the hypocricy of his life: he must tear down others and their accomplishments in order to justify his own inadequacies.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry! It's not my fault!... I didn't mean it!....forgive me!" He lunges with the dagger, one hand covering his eyes... but fails to hit his target, only inches away. Sage deflects Ebar's wild lunge with the dagger safely away from Nora, while Ebar -- having failed to destroy the embodiment of his lost conscience -- crumples into a sobbing pile on the floor.

Which is where failures like him belong! Suppose President Kennedy had said, "Well, we'd like to go to the moon, but it's too hard, so let's just mess around with technical models and congressional reports while some other country full of go-getters that's not as sensitive to the needs of our poor, suffering slackers who would feel incredible psychological damage compared to other people and their accomplishments goes ahead with THEIR space program and whups our butts."

Standards are high. Standards are hard. But the rewards are greater than we can ever imagine. Just the act of reaching for those standards takes us that much closer to the angels of our better natures and further from the dust of the earth.

Thanks, Steve. We needed to hear that.