Where Monsters Dwell #15: Kraa -- the Unhuman!

Where Monsters Dwell #15, with a publication date of May 1972 and original cover art by John Severin, features a reprint of the Tales of Suspense #18 (June 1961) cover story, "Kraa the Unhuman!"

A Lee-Kirby monster tale in the classic Silver Age mode -- meaning, the Cold War is either overtly or covertly a central part of the narrative, as it is in "Fin Fang Foom!" and Fin Fang Foom prototype Grogg! -- "Kraa the Unhuman!" is another example of Lee-Kirby doing a walk-through in a monster story of a blockbuster superhero title soon to come; in this case, The Incredible Hulk #1 of May 1962.

"Kraa the Unhuman!" is a poor African guy who falls into a hunter's pit trap right before an invading army from the East (a.k.a., the Soviet Union) sets off a nuclear test explosion; he is transformed into a suffering behemoth who the benighted natives worship as a god.

The other protagonist in "Kraa the Unhuman" is a meek teacher who is held in low esteem by his students. One day he decides to transform his life and travel to Africa to learn the meaning behind the Wabuzi tribe's worship of a strange idol. The teacher lectures his class that

Much of Africa is strange and mysterious! Even in this, the twentieth century, we understand little of its tribal customs and superstitions!

For instance, one of the most primitive tribes -- the Wabuzi -- has started fashioning many statues like this one! We don't know what this strange, grotesque figure represents, but I personally feel it is something sinister! Something evil!

Once in the jungle, the teacher makes contact with Kraa. Kraa says he will kill him. The teacher asks Kraa to tell him his story before Kraa takes his life. This is when we learn about the secret nuclear tests of the Red Army and Kraa's transformation into a brute.

The teacher realizes that Kraa is suffering from radiation sickness and is in great pain. He offers to apply some soothing ointment to Kraa's burning skin, and in performing this act of kindness he wins Kraa's trust.

Kraa ends up sacrificing his life to protect the teacher from a giant luridly colored python. The Wabuzis hail the teacher as a conquering god, replacing Kraa's image with the teacher's as their new idol.

Teacher returns home a new man; his dismissive students, dumbfounded:

So ends my tale! Since that time, my pupils have had new respect for me . . . and, what is more, I have had new respect for myself! But I owe it all to a strange, lifeless figure who shall remain unknown until the world is ready to understand! The figure of . . . Kraa, the Unhuman!

Stan Lee has managed a tidy little fantasy of white supremacy here.

At the time Tales of Suspense #18 originally appeared, the Freedom Rides of 1961 were just getting underway. The view of Africans as superstitious, ignorant -- un-human, really -- that is expressed in "Kraa the Unhuman!" was no doubt a broadly held belief in the United States, one that extended to include African-American citizens. Stan Lee always framed his narratives firmly in the language of conventional wisdom.

The fact that Kraa is a sympathetic character though -- not evil, not sinister (that role is played by the Commies and their nuclear test); in fact, Kraa sacrifices his life for the white man -- points the way to the political victories of the civil rights movement that were fast approaching.

The last four scans are from a story -- "Dead Ringer!" -- that concludes Where Monsters Dwell #15. The art is by Rich Buckler, channeling Jim Steranko, in one of his first assignments for Marvel.

Deathlok #2

Friday is a special day of the week. A few days away from the rat race beckon. Whether because a lot of people work a four-ten-hour-day schedule or the recurring happenstance of workers taking Friday off, the commute is always lighter on a Friday.

So there is a sense of relief. But there is also a feeling of exhaustion and regret: exhaustion from going to work Monday through Friday, week in and week out, year in and year and out, and all the stress and hostility that entails; and regret from the realization that one's life boils down to this.

And what is work? Let's not gussy it up here. Work is exploitation, and sometimes it is crass. I work for a labor union. So I have a collective bargaining agreement with a wage scale and benefits. But the indignities and injustices of society at large are not absent from my office. We recapitulate all the errors of hierarchy and the impediments of the ego. Some get the company car, the gas card, expense account, private office and flexible schedule, while others punch the clock and do the work in a constant state of anxiety over punishment and new demands.

Yesterday after I disembarked from the train and was waiting for the bus on International Boulevard, I watched a pot-bellied man with a black handle-bar mustache and a fat wallet attached to a chain hooked to his belt labor his way through oncoming traffic until he arrived at the safety of the median. He waited there for a while until traffic cleared and then he crossed the three lanes to the bus stop where I stood.

Once the bus arrived and we boarded, we sat in the back with a couple of young guys -- one white, the other black -- wearing the obligatory gear of professional sports franchises. There were also two young black women, one wearing a headscarf.

The back of the bus is an urban drain grate, the place where society's detritus accumulates. It is not an accident that I am there. This week I lumbered through the days with a badly pulled hamstring and a burst eardrum.

Music from one of the young men's phone filled the back of the bus -- tinny, whiny, simple synthesized sounds like those that accompany early-generation video games such as Donkey Kong, Asteroids or Space Invaders. Neil Young is right. Music is dying. I have noticed more young people, shunning earbuds, walking around holding their phones, listening to this flat screeching noise.

The pot-bellied man with the black handle-bar mustache talked on his phone to whom I assume was his lover: "I want you to be happy. Can you do that? I just want you to be happy."

He kept saying, "I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy," as if it were an incantation.

The young men ignored him.

When Deathlok first appeared in Astonishing Tales (cover date, August 1974) I, a grade-school kid, read it. It was different from other super-hero titles of the time. Darker, dystopian, a The Six Million Dollar Man meets Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in a near future where multinational corporations and the military rule over a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

As a boy I knew right then, situated as I was in the sunshine of Watergate America, that Deathlok announced a new era. As Nixon helicoptered away from the White House that August, we were on the cusp of something radically different. Artist Rich Buckler and writer Doug Moench successfully captured what that was to be: Cyborgs toiling in service of a corporate-military nexus reigning over a planet of failed states. One might argue that this is the default landscape depicted in today's comic books.

What I a particularly enjoyed as a kid was the dialogue that Deathlok carried on with himself; or, I should say, the conservation that Colonel Luther Manning, the body and mind of Deathlok, carried on with the sentient computer implanted in his head. It was at once futuristic, like an internalized HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, and primitive, capturing the basic everyday self-consciousness of our species.

Deathlok has been through many iterations and character cycles since I stopped collecting comic books. The latest incarnation features a black man named Henry Hayes who works for an NGO like Doctors Without Borders. He is an ex-soldier with a prosthetic leg, a single father raising a wayward teenage daughter. That is his cover. But secretly -- unknown even to himself -- he is a super-agent, like a Jason Bourne, who conducts assassinations and grand theft for a shadowy organization; an attractive female keyboard jockey dispatches and coordinates Deathlok's operations from a darkened computer room.

Nathan Edmonson, who does excellent work on The Punisher and Black Widow, is the author. Mike Perkins, provides the art, which I particularly enjoy; it is as grand as Mike Deodato's. Take a look at the scans below. Deathlok deals with a drone attack at sea while trying to extract an asset from a downed aircraft. Note Perkins' study of the ocean horizon. Very evocative.