In the wake of comics legend Steve Ditko’s passing, reader Man of the Atom shares a Ditko story that’s downright prescient in light of the culture war being waged in comics–and all media-today.
The following excerpts are taken from the plot synopsis of Blue Beetle #5 from November, 1968.
At a Hub City art museum, critic Boris Ebar lectures his students on the misshapen, dirt-colored piece known as “Our Man”: “This anonymous work is a perfect example of art that reveals the true spirit of man…man as he really is.” Ebar highlights the missing eyes and heart, as well as the closed hands that symbolize, “man’s inability to solve or control the illusion we call existence.”Passer-by / art lover / part-time action hero Ted Kord comments to his companion Tracey that it’s a shame that a majority fo the folks gathered around Ebar seem to support that claim. One of those in agreement with the poor state of man is the gorilla-faced Hugo, the artist behind “Our Man,” who thinks to himself: “That’s exactly how I feel! Man is an incompetent nothing in a world of mystic terrors…all without meaning or purpose!”
The Hub City art museum seems to be the action hero hangout, as none other than Vic Sage drops by. Ebar calls out to Sage for support in his argument, but Sage will have none of it: “Your views and that thing belong on a junk heap! But it’s perfect for all of you…perfect for self-admitted nothings who have nowhere to go in their world of nothing!” Kord tells Tracey that he’d prefer Sage’s company to Ebar’s, and they venture in to the next exhibit, where more heroic pieces are on display. These, says Kord, are representative of an artist who thought better of the world.
FYI, Vic Sage is the civilian identity of Ditko’s cult favorite creation The Question, whom Alan Moore tried and utterly failed to undermine with his intended parody character Rorschach.
On a relevant side note, it’s eerie how Sage’s scathing denouncement of Hugo’s nihilistic art sounds a lot like someone else’s critique of two recent sci-fi movies. And no, I hadn’t read this issue of Blue Beetle before now.
Normies often ask me why SJWs purposefully run the IPs they usurp into the ground. Why do they lust after the destruction of beauty and truth to the exclusion of making a profit? Steve Ditko knew the answer fifty years ago.
But the group of nihilist beatniks that follow Ebar’s opinion find the room of heroic art unbelieveable — suitable only for fairy tales. Not only that, but the art is offensive to them; it represents what they feel they can’t be. Sage opines: “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.”
I already admired Vic Sage. Now I find my high regard for this character blossoming into full-fledged love. #nohomo.
Our guy Vic even knows the correct answer when Lefty demands an apology.
Kord thanks Sage for standing with him, and Sage insists that it should be the other way around — Kord saved an inspiring piece of art. Ebar suddenly appears at Sage’s shoulder, demanding an apology for the earlier embarrassment, but Sage retorts: “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!”
From now on, I plan to keep a text file full of Question quotes handy for arguing with SJWs on Twitter.
Yet Blue Beetle Ted Kord is not to be outdone by the Question’s high T exploits.
Meanwhile, “Our Man” rampages through a Hub City park, destroying statues of town heroes. The beatniks have assembled there and cheer on the sculpture-on-sculpture violence. As a police officer protects a passing woman and her child from the falling debris, Beetle swoops down from the Bug to save the day: “You seem to get your kicks out of destroying. I get mine from kicking the destroyers.”
Conservatives take note. When Blue Beetle sees a Leftist vandal tearing down a statue in the public square, does he balk at getting involved for fear of “sinking to the SJWs’ level”? Does he argue against intervention because “That’s not who we are?”
No. He enthusiastically answers the nihilist iconoclast in kind. He is the model of the happy warrior because beautiful, truthful art has inspired him with confidence in the civilization he defends.
In this issue, Ditko even features a proto-SJW hatemob and once again shows the Question responding accordingly.
Vic Sage agrees to cover the exhibit containing “The Unconquered,” which ticks off the supporters of “Our Man” to no end. Ebar and his critic pals get together to threaten to force Sage’s sponsors to drop out. Ho-hum, that again? Sage tells them to mind their own business.
Today the preferred nomenclature is “Fuck Off,” but it was a more polite time.
He’s confronted by Ebar, who says he’s gotten two sponsors to drop Sage’s show in Hub City. But Sage replies, “If sponsors or anyone else lets you do their thinking for them, they’re in trouble, not me!”
ZFG Question FTW!
Truly Steve Ditko was a man ahead of his time. Go seek out his work, and for a decidedly non-political action-adventure romp, check out my award-winning Soul Cycle.
It just so happens that I wrote something similar a few weeks ago! Great minds really do think alike.
Nicely done.
Damn. If only our political leaders down here where I live would have the same backbone as sage.
Also need to track down some of Ditko's Charltan Comics works.
@Mega-Buster Shepard
July 9, 2018 at 1:23 PM
"Damn. If only our political leaders down here where I live would have the same backbone as sage.
Also need to track down some of Ditko's Charlton Comics works."
Check Amazon here, or haunt eBay for these hardcover editions.
DC Archive Editions: "The Action Heroes"
Volume 1 and Volume 2.
Volume 1 is Captain Atom by Ditko from the 50s and 60s
Volume 2 has Ditko's Blue Beetle and Question stories.
Brian,
Wow just wow. Dikto sure the present unfolding back then.
Also 1968, the year that the proto SJW sons of collaborationist fathers to kill Western civilization definitively
xavier
If you go back, you'll find that a lot of what's happening now was happening then, too. I've been re-reading Marvel's Werewolf by Night recently and…it's not like I ever held it in particularly high regard (Tomb of Dracula was always the best of Marvel's horror books), but the book has a lot of stuff that would resonate with modern SJWs because it was created and written by guys like Gerry Conway (who described himself as being like Meathead on All in the Family, which explains a lot). Young, immature guys who tended to create whiny, judgmental stories with whiny, judgmental heroes. You've got a book about a freaking werewolf with an unlimited budget and they were serving up ready-for-cheap-television stories about alpha males being secret cowards or how classic Hollywood movies could drive right-wing people crazy, with a lot of prose that rips off Hunter S. Thompson really badly. It's awkward.
OT: I want to read a comic book about a werewolf with an unlimited budget.
Fantastic find, Man of the Atom! I never read comics as a kid but stories like these and Razorfist’s video make me see why the guy was appreciated by the Right kind of people, and why he was hated by the degenerates.
I cut my teeth on these, Durandel. Research some of these names — it'll be amazing what you find, especially the last two in the list.
Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Don Heck, Gil Kane, Gene Colon, Bob Brown, Johnny Craig, Curt Swan, George Tuska, the Buscema Brothers, Mike Sekowsky, Gardner Fox, and Robert Kanigher.
That and a whole lotta Pulp (Tarzan, John Carter, Doc Savage, Avenger, etc) made up my childhood. I was a lucky SOB — you guys have to work for it.
Learn your history.
Grazie mille Man ofvthe Atom! Will do
"At a Hub City art museum, critic Boris Ebar lectures his students on the misshapen, dirt-colored piece known as “Our Man”: “This anonymous work is a perfect example of art that reveals the true spirit of man…man as he really is.” Ebar highlights the missing eyes and heart, as well as the closed hands that symbolize, “man’s inability to solve or control the illusion we call existence."
I remember going to the local art museum circa 2000. On to top floor where they keep the crappy modern art (I'd normally not bother but this was a field trip) there was an ugly statue called something like "Clutching the Void" that was very similar to what's described here.
Art imitating life imitating art.
I got escorted out of MoMA back when worked in NYC. I had gone to the bar first as it was part of a date. Date was going badly and the “art” was a joke. We then got to an exhibit of a broken toilet. I don’t remember the particulars but I got vocal enough about the BS around me that I was asked to leave and not come back. Which was fine by me, as I much preferred the MET.
But the pretension, that broken toilets, jars of piss, chairs made of poop, blank canvas, soda cans etc is art, is beauty made manifest…it’s maddening and enraging.
"Modern art" was a psyop created by the CIA.
I used to love online discourse and arguing. But it's become sheer brutality and unreason. Terrifying. I never thought the Internet could be this way.
You're probably among the 10% of the population that can be convinced by logic. The other 90% can only be reached by rhetoric.