September is Cosmic Zap month here at Doctor Xaos Comics Madness. “Cosmic Zap” was Steve Gerber’s term for the proliferation of mystic, space-SF, psychedelic stories throughout Marvel Comics and perhaps comics in general during the mid-70s, especially those written and illustrated by Jim Starlin. I’m posting about it through the month because it’s my birthday (the 4th). Comics, wizards, dragons, acid-trips, the cosmos, surfing, babes – this wasn’t just Day-Glo flowers any more, nor was it confined to a minimal subculture or location. A funny thought hit me – since the early 80s, we comics readers have been whining about not being taken seriously or being included in the mainstream, and yet am I not remembering casual non-advertising Marvel iconography all over the place? In 1976-77, we thought those vans were the coolest things on Earth. I designed them in my junior high notebooks, imagining the hi-fi and the oval windows and the black dragons twisting across the side.
I think I remember I included a burnt-orange shag rug, although at the time I did not know about the – if I had, you bet it’d have been in there. I bet it was in this one! Did I mention my birthday? Oh lucky you, here’s some more “all about me” in addition to and 1. My parents were born in 1926 and 1931. My stepfather was born in 1918.
My three step-siblings were born to my stepfather and his first wife in the late 1940s and early 1950s. My two brothers were born in the 1950s. I’m not only the youngest, I’m the very youngest. Both of my mom’s husbands had the same last name. My side of the family was military until the mid-60s with some bohemian and intellectual details, then split over issues best described as “America.” My mom became intensely involved in local community and national activism, my home became a crossroads for a lot of people’s lives, and my upbringing unlike my siblings’ was countercultural in addition to military. Yeah, communes to the left of me, military ID and rifle ranges to the right. My dad was the naval military historian in Saigon around 1970-72, as I mentioned in.
The step-side of the family had roots in the intellectual Old Left, and the siblings being a little older and more affluent, they were spending their trust funds being New Left radicals. Pretty seriously too – one was a Maoist and one was a Weatherman, for instance, which led to colorful insults during arguments. They might have been a little nuts but they weren’t dilettantes, and they treated me as a fellow adult even before I was 10. Use those items as the context for how I encountered cosmic zap directly, strangely, and formatively (that it began in the mid-60s, with Ditko and Kirby is for another post).
Ivy Queen The Original Rude Girl Rarefieds
I didn’t merely receive it either as a long-gone archive or puzzle over it right off the stands. Steranko’s Nick Fury, Englehart’s Doctor Strange, Starlin’s Captain Marvel, Gerber’s Man-Thing, Lee & Buscema’s Silver Surfer, and probably a few other eligible references came to me the stack of comics bequeathed to me by my big brother sometime around 1971. At this point I was a crazy reader of Greek and Norse mythology and a fanatic for Star Trek. It’s Ziggy Stardust. Jesus Christ. Jim Morrison.
Dan Ellsberg. Frank N Furter. You don’t even notice that he’s wearing superhero underwear, he is that cool. This is how I visualize stuff, it’s my mental space. You can add a sustained, variably distorting bass note to that if you like.
People who know my games are blinking – yeah, they say, this is what this guy writes, how did I not see that? This really is my Marvel. I’m 51 tomorrow. This is my mind. I’m not caged”in here” with you.
I am out there and now you are too. Safe, well sort of, with me. Next: It was already happening. Those cosmic Warlock books were awesome.
I wasn’t even sure what the fuck was going on some of the time, but it didn’t really matter. It was enough to make me stop caring about Superman and Batman. And I also had older siblings who were digging in to the music of the times, so through the shared forced-air registers (along with the incense) came drifting prog mainstays like Yes and Gentle Giant along with more out-there shit like The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Monks. Yeah The Star-Thief.