1997

19.3

H. Brenton Stevens
"Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's . . . Rocketman!": Pynchon's Comic Book Mythology in Gravity's Rainbow

Within the vast library of criticism devoted to Gravity's Rainbow very little attention has been paid to the role that comic books assume in Thomas Pynchon's aesthetics. Some notable exceptions exist, but by and large critics have not gone beyond the simple recognition of the presence of allusions to comic books within the narrative. The essential question remains: what does one make of them? The short answer is that they, along with songs, films, and other popular cultural references, are simply a part of Pynchon's "stone soup" approach--every aspect of twentieth-century culture goes into his pot, both high and low. But comic books serve a special function in Gravity's Rainbow. Because of their melodramatic and often inane subject matter, comic books were regarded as mere children's fare prior to World War II. After America entered the war, however, comic books took their place alongside other forms of mass media, serving two functions: propaganda and escapism. Homefront consumers and weary servicemen alike were assured of the justness of their cause as they read about superheroes triumphing over the evil Nazis and "Japs." At the same time, they savored the escape that comic books momentarily provided for them from the horrors of war. Pynchon, chiefly through Tyrone Slothrop, makes use of both of these functions of comic books. In his Rocketman persona, Slothrop is both the embodiment of the justification of the Rocket State's policies--superhero of the elect--and an emblem of the possibility that fantasy holds for escape from the dictates of these policies--superhero of the preterite.

During World War II, comic books were immensely popular with both juveniles and servicemen. Postal Exchange records show that comic books outsold by a margin of ten to one the combined sales of the three leading magazines at the time, Life, Reader's Digest, and The Saturday Evening Post (O'Brien 5). For homesick servicemen, comic books provided a momentary escape, beckoning to them--like Pynchon's narrator--saying, "Come then. Leave your war awhile" (134). Comic book references serve this function in Gravity's Rainbow as well. They provide a momentary respite from the barrage of Pynchon's artillery, a chance to have a laugh and catch one's breath. An example of this type of innocuous fun is Pynchon naming Pirate Prentice's driver, a "batman," Corporal Wayne (12) because Batman's alter-ego is millionaire Bruce Wayne.

If this type of sophomoric fun were all there was to it, critics would be justified in ignoring the role comic books play in the novel, but Pynchon hints at another function that comic books serve in a modern bureaucracy: "In a corporate State, a place must be made for innocence, and its many uses. In developing an official version of innocence, the culture of childhood has proven invaluable" (419). Comic books and other aspects of the "culture of childhood" foster innocence, but not an innocence that one normally associates with children. Pynchon refers here to the type of innocence that allowed some German soldiers to feel that should not be held accountable for the horrors of the holocaust because they had been simply following orders. Comic books can be utilized by the state to promote this dangerous type of innocence in two ways. The first way involves propaganda: comic books can be used to show the clear-cut justice of a cause and remove the ambiguity from a state's actions. During World War II, every comic book hero from Tarzan to Joe Palooka went to war with the Nazis and their allies. One critic comments on the especially effective cartoon war that Superman waged against Hitler: "The Nazis took such a beating at the hands of Siegel and Shuster's hero . . . that Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels himself is said to have bounded to his feet in the middle of a Reichstag meeting waving an American comic book and furiously denouncing Superman as a Jew" (Dooley and Engle 32).

On a surface level, this type of propaganda seems fairly harmless from an American perspective. After all, what's wrong with characters such as Superman? Doesn't he embody the noble virtues of truth, justice, and The American Way? The danger lies in the mythological method which comic books employ. The American Way, and more specifically, the white male American way is presented at the expense of all other ways of being. Gary Engle notes that American popular culture including comic books has often made "conscientious efforts to indoctrinate the children of immigrants with American values, often at the expense of traditions within the [immigrant] community" (84). Pointsman and his cronies at PISCES attempt to indoctrinate Slothrop in a similar manner. He experiences a vision in which he is nearly raped by other black men including Malcolm X, and forced to endure a putrid shit storm which transports him like Dorothy to another land where he encounters a comic book-like figure, "westwardman" (61-67). The disembodied voice of PISCES tells Slothrop that westwardman's universe is a universe of singularities, of stereotypes. Slothrop becomes confused when he encounters groups of people. He asks if the others are "necessary? or unnecessary?" The voice replies, "It depends what you have in mind." Confused, Slothrop says, "Shit, I don't have anything in mind." Ominously, the voice intones, "We do" (70). In this exchange, one can see an example of the dangers of comic book propaganda as practiced by the raketen-stadt. The corporate powers-that-be want to convince Slothrop that their reductive mythology is some sort of natural truth. If they can get Slothrop to believe this is the case, he will not question their intentions and will serve their cause. The conversation is followed by an even more ominous passage: "For a moment, ten thousand stiffs humped under the snow in the Ardennes take on the sunny Disneyfied look of numbered babies under white wool blankets" (70). Pynchon reminds the reader of the dangers inherent in seemingly benign comic book mythologies such as the tale of westwardman. If internalized, such mythologies can transform the horrors of war into mere cartoons. They, to borrow Pynchon's terminology, need deaths in order to create the culture of the rocket. If they can hide these deaths under a cartoon curtain of snow and paint, so much the better. There is sufficient evidence that this indoctrination of Slothrop is successful. The narrator describes him, "His erection hums from a certain distance, like an instrument installed, wired by Them into his body as a colonial outpost here in our raw and clamorous world, another orifice representing their white Metropolis far away" (285). Slothrop may not have been anally violated by Malcolm X and his companions, but he carries the seeds of death in his bowels nonetheless. He has been transformed into a type of Superman, subservient to their "Metropolis."

Ironically, Pynchon may have gotten the idea for this particular episode of Gravity's Rainbow from a comic book. Robert Crumb's story "Whiteman" from Zap Comix #1 (1967) closely parallels Slothrop's experience in the Roseland Ballroom sequence. Zap Comix was the prototype of an entire genre of comic books known as "underground comix." These comics were sold in "head" shops and aimed at adults rather than children. These comic books were completely unlike their mainstream cousins. The stories in them were often satires of culture rather than reflections of it. The story of "Whiteman" "provides insight into the psychological sources of racism . . . it illustrates the way in which people who are different from us can become a kind of screen onto which we project precisely those things we most fear in ourselves" (Schecter and Semeiks 37). The protagonist of "Whiteman" is a stereotypical middle-aged American who confronts repressed feelings of sex and violence. In the story's pivotal scene, Whiteman is chased by a group of equally stereotypical black men. He comments, "I can't stand it. What if someone sees me like this? In this state of fear!" The black men then attempt to pull Whiteman's pants off, presumably to violate him, while he whines, "No! Please! Think of my dignity . . . my family!" The black men tell him "You jis' a nigger like evva body else!" They then ask him to join a parade with them which is loosely symbolic of some type of multicultural utopia. The story ends with a trope more suited to a television or radio serial, a cliffhanger. The narrator asks, "Will Whiteman join the parade? Oh, eventually!" Both Slothrop and Whiteman fear having done to them what they, as archetypes of the white hegemony, have done to other minorities. Westwardman and Blicero have both literally sowed their seeds into disenfranchised people like Whappo and Enzian in order to propagate the rocket culture of death. The difference in Slothrop and Whiteman's cases is that they experience what it is like to be threatened with the rocket. It is this experience of empathy with the plight of the racial other which creates the possibility that they will eventually be able to rebel against the white hegemony and "join the parade."

Immediately after Slothrop's experience with PISCES, the reader encounters a strange entry concerning a substance known as "Kryptosam," a form of tyrosine that "in the presence of some component of the seminal fluid . . . promotes conversion of the tyrosine into melanin or skin pigment." Even without knowledge of comic book mythology one can see that this substance is a part of the threat of violation by the phallus, which is a metaphoric extension of the rocket. If used successfully on Slothrop, Whiteman, or Gottfried by their rocket state abusers--super villains like Blicero or Pointsman--they will be transformed into black colonials which They then can use for Their insidious purposes. But "Kryptosam" is also a comic book reference. The one substance that can kill Superman is Kryptonite. It takes away his super powers. Thus, Kryptosam is a way for Them to keep control.

Another one of Jamf's creations, Imipolex G, seems also to function like Kryptonite on Slothrop. After he discovers that he may have been under observation by IG Farben for his entire life, Slothrop encounters "A smell, a forbidden room, at the bottom edge of his memory. . . . It is allied with the Worst Thing . . . he knows that what's haunting him now will prove to be the smell of Imipolex G" (286). Slothrop's fear has triggered a memory of what was done to him in Jamf's laboratory where his "assemblage" began, and where he may have had experiments performed upon him involving both Kryptosam and Imipolex G which may have been designed to bring Slothrop under Their control.

Kryptosam is only one of the many correspondences that Pynchon makes between Rocketman and Superman. When Rocketman is donning his costume, Saure suggests putting a "big, scarlet, capital-R" on the "back of the cape" (366). Superman's cape has a large capital-S upon it. Superman's war cry is "Up, up, and away." Rocketman's war cries are "Hauptstufe" (380) and "Fickt nicht mit dem Raketemensch!" (435). Similarly, the narrator informs us that the password in the zone is "FASTER--THAN, THE--SPEEDOFLIGHT" (726), which echoes one of Superman's epithets, namely, that he is "faster than a speeding bullet." One of Greta's film roles is "the dizzy debutante Lotte Lustig" (483). Pynchon parodies here the Superman mythology's predilection for names alliterated with L's: Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor. Her description best fits Lois Lane who is Superman's love interest in the comic books.

Despite these similarities, Rocketman is no Superman. Slothrop does not battle crime or save worlds; he smuggles dope and commits indecencies with minors. When the role of Rocketman is given to him, his first thoughts are not to battle evil: "Slothrop has been imagining a full-scale Rocketman Hype, in which the people bring him food, wine and maidens in a four-color dispensation in which there is a lot of skipping and singing `La, la, la, la,' and beefsteaks blossoming from these strafed lindens" (366). It should be noted that "four-color" here is a reference to comic books which were originally printed utilizing a process involving only four colors. Rocketman's first thoughts, like those of any good imperialist hero of the rocket state, are to use his power to satisfy his libido. He reminds the reader here of Weissman abusing the hereros or of Frans Van der Groov who exterminated the dodo birds in Mauritius. A cliche adage in comic book lore is that with great power comes great responsibility. Slothrop wants to use his power initially to serve himself rather than loftier goals such as the kind to which Superman aspires. Saure comically evokes this facet of Rocketman. He says, "Rocketman! Spaceman! Welcome to our virgin planet. We only want to be left in some kind of peace here, O.K.? If you kill us, don't eat us. If you eat, don't digest. Let us come out the other end again, like diamonds in the shit of smugglers" (438). This is comic book language and belongs in the same category of discourse as "Take me to your leader." The reason that it is funny is that ironically Rocketman is not a super-hero. Unlike Superman, he has no real power. But the colonial sentiment behind Saure's speech is no joke. Unconsciously, Rocketman's actions may be all a part of Their plan, as we shall see.

Slothrop's desire to become Rocketman mirrors the desires of anyone who has ever read a Superman comic book. Umberto Eco observes in "The Myth of Superman" that Superman's universal appeal is due in part to his duality. On the one hand, Superman, as "mild-mannered" reporter Clark Kent, is an everyman figure, someone with whom the audience can readily identify. On the other hand, Superman possesses powers which the reader envies. Eco notes, "In an industrial society . . . where man becomes a number in the realm of the organization which has usurped his decision-making role, he has no means of production and is thus deprived of his power to decide" (929). Thus, Superman is attractive to the reader because he is free. In Freudian terms, the reader vicariously undergoes a process of wish fulfillment. In Slothrop, the motivation to be free is especially prevalent because he fears he has been under observation his entire life. One of the questions the novel invites the reader to ask is whether or not Slothrop exercises free will at any point. Sir Stephen Dodson-Truck calls this the "Nature of Freedom" problem. He says, "I'm involved with the `Nature of Freedom' drill you know, wondering if any action of mine is truly my own, or if I always do only what They want me to do . . . regardless of what I believe, you see . . ." (541). Is Slothrop truly free or is he one of Their pawns? Is Rocketman merely a servant of the rocket state? Will Rocketman be able to escape from the evil clutches of the capitalist white hegemony? Tune in to the next paragraph to find out!

Part of the question of Slothrop's freedom depends upon his taking responsibility for his own actions. He cannot blame all of his actions upon Them. He experiences a realization of this type when he engages in sadomasochism with Greta. Greta wants him to whip her. Moreover, she asks him to put his helmet on before he beats her. Slothrop complies with her wishes. Slothrop is surprised at how quickly he seems to take to the role of sadistic abuser: "Somebody has already educated him. Something . . . that dreams Prussian and wintering among their meadows, in whatever cursive lashmarks wait across the flesh of their sky so bleak, so incapable of any sheltering, wait to be summoned"; but then he realizes that he is responsible for his own cruelty: "No. No--he still says 'their,' but he knows better. His meadows now, his sky . . . his own cruelty" (396). Rocketman realizes that the brutality that he is visiting upon the landscape of Greta's body is not merely an extension of the programming he has received from Them, but a product of some dark desire within himself. As long as Slothrop feels powerless, he can attribute everything that happens to him as some part of Their plan. This episode is the first instance in which Slothrop realizes that he, at least in part, is responsible for his own actions. He has started to question his programming.

After this incident, his Rocketman persona begins to fade. Later in the novel, he encounters some graffiti which reads "Rocketman was here" (624). Slothrop perceives it as some epitaph for one of his lost selves: "His first thought was that he'd written it himself and forgot. Odd that that should've been his first thought, but it was. Might be he was starting to implicate himself, some yesterday version of himself, in the Combination against who he was right then" (624). The "yesterday version of himself" is his Rocketman persona. The "Combination" is all the forces that do not want Slothrop to dismantle what They have worked so hard in Jamf's lab to create. Rocketman is their super-hero. The state needs to create such mythologies to justify its actions and to satiate the public need for such heroes. When Slothrop hears about the death of Roosevelt, the narrator notes that Roosevelt was "a being They assembled, a being They would dismantle" (374). They are also responsible for assembling Rocketman. When it suits Their purposes, They will want the pleasure of disassembling him. Rocketman's first steps towards autonomy are in defiance of Their will. Pynchon's allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" which follows Slothrop's first stirrings of freedom is also noteworthy. The narrator says, "In its sluggish coma, the albatross stirred" (624). Pynchon provides the reader with an answer to the central mystery of Coleridge's poem. Why does the Mariner shoot that darned albatross anyway? Perhaps because, like Rocketman, he has been programmed to do so. The fact that in Gravity's Rainbow the albatross begins to revive indicates that Slothrop has started to reject Their programming and begun to cast off his role as Their Rocketman.

But Pernicious Pop and the villains of the RaketenStadt don't give up so easily. Slothrop must undergo one more metaphysical comic book adventure. This time around, he has allies. Rocketman, the singularity, has fragmented into the "Floundering Four," which, as others have noted, is a parody of Marvel Comics' creation, the "Fantastic Four." The Fantastic Four first appeared in November of 1961. It was to be among the first of a new breed of super-hero comic books which rejected the notion that superheroes were omnipotent demi-gods. The Fantastic Four had weaknesses; they had problems. They had "all the hang-ups of normal humans, plus the additional hang-up of being super -beings in a world of lesser ones" (O'Brien 21). Pynchon's quartet are similarly cursed by their powers; each has a "Fatal Flaw" which involves some sort of alienation from society. Myrtle Miraculous is exiled from love. Her counterpart in the Fantastic Four is the Invisible Girl who is capable of rendering herself invisible and able to create womb-like force bubbles of protection. She is a feminist's worst nightmare--she is reduced to a nurturing role of mother-like protection of her compatriots who treat her for the most part as if she really is invisible. Marcel combines qualities of both the Human Torch who, like Marcel, is "adolescent" and "may be a bit repressed" (677), and Reed Richards, a brilliant rocket scientist whose knowledge of science is astounding, but who often seems to lack warmth. Reed would be apt to analyze the various implications of each word of a friendly greeting as in the way Marcel responds to Maximilian's "Hey man gimme some skin man" (675). As Mr. Fantastic, Reed's alter-ego, Richards is able to stretch his body into various configurations like Plastic Man, whom Slothrop has fantasized becoming earlier in the novel (206-207). Slothrop is also able to stretch his limbs: "Broderick and Nalline's shadow-child, their unconfessed, their monster son, who was born with hydraulic clamps for hands that know only how to reach and grab" (677).

The closest correspondence between comic book and novel, however, is the identification of Maximilian with the Thing. The Thing's real name is Ben Grimm. Like Superman, he possesses superhuman strength, but his strength carries a terrible price--he is hideously deformed, transformed into an orange stone-man. Weisenberger describes him as a "cross between the elephant man and a stone fence" (283). He also looks vaguely scatological. These characteristics link the Thing with Maximilian who is clearly an embodiment of the racial stereotype. He is the "singularity," the reduction of a racial group into one entity that PISCES wants Slothrop to believe is reality. He is also that Other which the Rocket State wants to consign to the toilet, the land under the Roseland Ballroom with all the other colonial excrement that the Rocket State has ingested to foster its culture of death. Ben Grimm, like Whiteman and Rocketman, is one of the few white comic book heroes who understands what it is like to be on the other end of the phallus.

Slothrop's placement along with a woman who cannot know love, a robot with outmoded "19th-century brainwork," and an Uncle Tom speaking in a style reminiscent of minstrel-show dialogue demonstrates to the reader that he is no longer a servant of the Raketen-Stadt. He is now one of the preterite. The "Radiant Hour" which the Floundering Four are attempting to rescue is among other things, innocence and freedom from Them. "Central Control" puts their "mobile building" on "Slow Crawl, Suburban Vectors" because it does not want the rescue to occur. The Floundering Four do achieve some success, however. They begin to see a world outside of the comic book in which the Rocket Fathers have placed them: "For the first time now it becomes apparent that the 4 and the Father-conspiracy do not entirely fill their world. Their struggle is not the only, or even the ultimate one" (679). The Rocket Fathers' myth of singularity and its projection of a world dominated by patriarchal law begins to break down. This episode isn't simply a parody of comic book mythology. Steven Weisenberger suggests the foursome resembles Dorothy and her yellow brick road companions in Oz (283). The FF's peek beyond the Rocket Fathers' fantasy world is analogous to Dorothy's discovery of the man pulling the Wizard's levers behind the curtain. Slothrop has begun to discover that he is not a comic book hero in a world created by Rocket propaganda. He is on the verge of reaching the "Outer Radiance," the land beyond the toilet-bowl Metropolis in which he has been imprisoned. But he is thwarted by a comic ape with a sodium bomb. Pernicious Pop--Pynchon's Version of Dr. Doom, the comic-book quartet's arch-villain--disassembles him before he can free himself. Unlike Dorothy, he will never be allowed to return home.

After Rocketman is literally exploded, the powers of the Rocket State attempt to dismantle him figuratively. The narrator says, "There is also the story about Tyrone Slothrop, who was sent into the Zone to be present at his own assembly. . . . The plan went wrong. He is being broken down instead, and scattered" (738). Rocketman is now merely a story. He ceases to be useful to Them, and so They want to extinguish any value he may have as a hero to the preterite. Mickey Wuxtry-Wuxtry, "world renowned analyst," attempts to cast doubt on the existence of Dr. Jamf (738). The Rocket State wants to cover its tracks: Rocketman did not turn out the way They wanted and so They want to deny his very existence. One can see a similar scheme in our own reality with the assertions of so-called experts who preach to whoever will listen that the holocaust never occurred but was merely a myth engineered by the Allies to show that their cause was just. History has become a mythology which can be shaped by Pernicious Pops to serve their respective agendas. At the end of the novel, Pig Bodine remains "one of the few who can still see Slothrop" (740). He gives Slothrop a bit of cloth stained with the blood of another preterite hero, John Dillinger. Comic books of the 1940's such as Crime Does Not Pay paint a picture of Dillinger as a monster. Their motivation is self evident. Dillinger "went out and socked Them right in the toilet privacy of Their banks" (741). In order to retain the public's belief in Their capitalist system, the Rocket State must depict Dillinger as the embodiment of evil, a Satan figure which every good American citizen will revile. Rocketman, like Dillinger, refused to be flushed down into their "toilet privacy" along with the rest of the preterite excrement, and so they must clean up the mess as best they can.

Despite their efforts, however, fragments of Slothrop remain. The mythology which They set in motion and which later got out of their control cannot be entirely extinguished: "Some believe that fragments of Slothrop have grown into consistent personae of their own" (742). He is rumored to appear on an album cover (738). A few of his friends like Bodine remember him. Some of his friends even model his Rocketman persona. Enzian and Christian are described as having "X-Ray" vision (728), which is one of Superman's powers. Geli Tripping manages to get Tchitcherine, a literal "Man of Steel," to fall in love with her. The narrator notes, "This is magic. Sure--but not necessarily fantasy" (735). Roger Mexico even decides to do what Rocketman could not do, rebel against Them. He thinks, "They will use us. We will help legitimize Them, though They don't need it really" (713). He realizes that "He has to choose between life and his death. Letting it sit for a while is no compromise, but a decision to live, on Their terms . . ." (713).

Appropriately enough, Mexico revolts against the Rocket Fathers using the only weapon which They leave him, the toilet language of the preterite. He transforms their food into objects of revulsion such as "clot casserole" and "discharge dumplings" (715). The attempt is humorous and performed in a juvenile comic book style, but the message behind the comedy of Mexico's revolting verbal sallies is deadly serious. It says, have no illusions about what you as a culture are consuming. You are eating the corpses of the preterite and taking into your bowels the seeds of your own destruction. Bodine and Mexico become the "Disgusting Duo," which is a parody of the "Dynamic Duo," as Batman and Robin are sometimes known. Bodine and Mexico's actions are ultimately ineffectual, but for a brief moment they refuse to serve Them. But these efforts are doomed to fail. For as the narrator knows, "It will all go on . . . with or without Uncle Tyrone" (744). Heroes such as Superman, Submariner, the Lone Ranger, and Phillip Marlowe will all be "Too late" (752). The Rocket will be launched and the heroes, both preterite and elect, will be unable finally to oppose Their will.

After World-War II, comic books, relieved of their propagandist function, became more and more sensationalist as publishers strove to maintain their adult audiences. Graphic depictions of sex, violence, and drug-use became common place. In 1954, Dr. Frederic Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent was published. Wertham, who is also credited as being the first person to notice the possible homosexual undertones of the relationship between Batman and Robin, felt that juvenile delinquency was in part due to the influence of comic books. Wertham's argument was flawed and at best speculative, but his book touched off a national crusade against comic books which led to a Senate Subcommittee Investigation and even to comic book burnings "in several cities around the country" (Goulart 263). The fact that everyone seemed to forget about at the time was that sex and violence were originally put into comic books by their creators in order to increase their appeal to servicemen during World War II (Goulart 241). The Rocket State needed servicemen to read Their propaganda, and when comic books no longer served Their purposes, They disassembled them. Rocketman, like comic books, is assembled by the Raketen-Stadt in order to serve Their designs. When he no longer serves Their ends, They dismantle him. But fragments of him survive in Pynchon's text. No one who reads Gravity's Rainbow will forget the legend of Rocketman, the greatest preterite super-hero of the postmodern world. For a moment, he defied Their will and fought for truth, justice, and the Pynchon way.

Department of English
The University of South Carolina
Columbia, South Carolina 29208

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O'Brien, Richard. The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1937-1945. New York: Ballantine, 1977.

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