Communists of the Marvel Universe #003: The Red Ghost

(Part three of an ongoing series analyzing the role of communists in the early Marvel Universe and how they have been adapted - or, in some cases, how they glaringly haven’t been adapted - by comics creators in a post Cold War climate.)


That’s the Red Ghost as in “The Red Ghost and his Super Apes,” of course. He turns intangible - hence the “Ghost” bit in his name - as a result of flying through a cosmic ray storm in order to recreate the circumstances under which the Fantastic Four got their powers, except he used a spaceship with no shielding in order to increase the exposure. Started out as an FF villain and has become sort of an all-purpose Marvel baddie.

Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say.

Ivan Kragoff was born in Leningrad, in what was at the time the Soviet Union. Before becoming the Red Ghost, Ivan was a Soviet scientist bent on beating the Americans to the moon and claiming it for the Communist empire. He assembled a crew of three trained apes — Mikhlo the Gorilla, Igor the Baboon, and Peotr the Orangutan — which he subjected to specialized training regimens of his own design, then took off on his lunar rocket trip on behalf of the USSR...

Hell, I got this one, you guys:

Ivan Kragoff was born in Leningrad, in what was at the time the Soviet Union. Before becoming the Red Ghost, Ivan was a Soviet scientist bent on beating the Americans to the moon and claiming it for the Communist empire. He assembled a crew of three trained apes — Mikhlo the Gorilla, Igor the Baboon, and Peotr the Orangutan — which he subjected to specialized training regimens of his own design, then took off on his lunar rocket trip on behalf of the USSR...

Right, that’s wrapped up! (Checks watch.) Hm, and quicker than usual…

Actually, no joke, in most of the Red Ghost’s appearances, I think that’s all you really need to do. Most of the times I've ever seen the Red Ghost in a comic, it’s not because the guys who were doing the story needed a commie bad guy, it’s that he’s a.) an evil genius, b.) a guy who turns intangible, and c.) OH MY GOD YOU GUYS MONKEYS AWESOME. If you’re going to do Spider-Man or the Hulk fights the Red Ghost in a contemporary comic book, it’s no sweat, there’s no need to bring up all that messy communist stuff; he's a mad scientist who happens to be Russian.

The messy communist stuff is, however, acutely important in his first appearance.

If you haven’t read Fantastic Four #13 … well, you should. Ditko inks Kirby (it results in a magnificently monstrous Thing), and you get this panel, which in black and white is absolutely stunning:

But anyway, here’s a summary. Reed Richards is again trying to get to the moon before the Soviets do, and he finds a new fuel source (Tunguska-derived, it appears – that’s right, Warren Ellis, Stan Lee totally beat you to this one!) with which to accomplish this. However, the Red Ghost and his simian crew also blast off at that very moment to conquer the moon in the name of Mother Russia. They both make it to the moon and start to fight, when suddenly, The Watcher makes his first appearance. He does his whole “I am bound never to interfere in mortals’ affairs, except this time” speech because the US/USSR conflict, no longer confined to Earth, now potentially threatens the rest of the universe. So he transports them to the Blue Area of the Moon where there’s breathable atmosphere and the ruins of an ancient civilization (it’s where the X-Men fought the Imperial Guard at the climax of the Dark Phoenix Saga, you’ll recall) and says to fight it out there, and whoever wins will win the space race for their side. The Fantastic Four, of course, beat the Red Ghost and claim the moon for freedom and democracy. “Space is your heritage,” the Watcher tells them. “See that you prove worthy of such a glorious gift!”

Okay, so right off, Marvel Time makes the “first men on the moon” thing an anachronism (though I guess we haven’t actually had a woman or apes up there yet). As for the Red Ghost himself, we can’t just cross out the communist references because they’re actually important in this case. The Red Ghost here isn’t just any mad scientist to fight, he has to represent something that the Fantastic Four would oppose ideologically; otherwise, it’s just another supercharacter scuffle and not the event of cosmic significance that Lee and Kirby are trying to sell us on in this story.

So to that end, we can ask, “What is it that ‘Soviet-ness’ represents here that the audience is to be repulsed by?” In other words, what exactly is Stan Lee’s beef with communism (other than that he’s an American citizen in the early 1960s)?

Well, it turns out in the story that the Red Ghost treats those apes pretty badly. He calls the gorilla “My monsterous slave,” and in the next panel shouts, “No food for you yet, comrade baboon! It is important to me that you remain hungry – I want you to be mean, vicious, dangerous!”

Later in the story, the Red Ghost captures Sue and imprisons her behind a force field guarded by his Super-Apes, and she thinks, “If I could only find a way to eliminate this force field – to free the Super-Apes! I would take my chacnes with them, rather than the Red Ghost, for they are like the communist masses, innocently enslaved by their evil leaders!” Sue manages to knock the force field out of commission, but they don’t attack her. “Just as I expected! They’re so ravenously hungry that they don’t even notice me in their frantic attempt to get the food which Kragoff had left on the other side of the force screen!” The gorilla punches out a wall. “And now,” Sue thinks, “no longer under the Red Ghost’s mental control, they want their freedom!

At the story’s end, they leave the Red Ghost on the moon to the mercies of the Super-Apes, who have rebelled against their cruel master. “Wait!” Kragoff says. “Why are you staring at me that way? Aiming the [paralysis] ray at me?? Your eyes – they’re gleaming with hatred – with vengeance!”

So stripped of era-specific politics, what “Soviet-ness” seems to mean for Stan Lee here (and elsewhere, notably in a Captain America/Hawkeye/Quicksilver/Scarlet Witch Avengers story with a Vietnam analogue) is exploitation, and that’s something you can always find a relevant outlet for. In fact, it’s interesting to see how Marvel’s anticommunist themes of the early 60s morph into the antiestablishment themes of the late 60s – they’re both about taking a stand against The Man, whether that Man is an American establishment figure or the Soviet high command keeping the little guy (or ape) down.

So there are any number of ways you could make this story relevant, to find a new way for the Red Ghost to be The Man. Perhaps the most mischevious would be to take the Soviet boogeyman and turn him relatively seamlessly into a ruthless, total free-market industrialist. Maybe he’s headed to the moon to strip it of its resources, to ransack the wonders of the Blue Area – you could play this as a guy who wants to own the moon, who wants to privatize Earth’s satellite. The Super-Apes are, as you will, his corporate drones or his underfed and underpaid working class. The FF, then, fight him to protect the moon from being divvied up like it was just another chunk of unclaimed geography; that space exploration is about something finer, something to bring humankind together, despite whatever differences we might have had on Earth. All that idealistic 60s Star Trek stuff, right? There’s a philosophical/ethical/ideological conflict that would make this important and not just another bad-guy fight, worthy of the Watcher’s interference.

Well, whatever way you do it (I'm sure there's a better way I haven’t thought of), again, it generally doesn’t matter for 99% of the Red Ghost appearances past, present and future. But then again, if you committed to the Red Ghost as a symbol of exploitation, maybe you could get more out of the character than just a mad monkey wrangler...

Star Trek: Reviews and Ruminations

I’m a pretty casual Star Trek fan. I watched a lot of Next Generation as a kid but never got too invested in it beyond “This is a show I watch because it is on.” It’s only been over the last few years that I got into the original series (or, if you must, The Original Series); and that, my friends, is a rad show, and you can and should watch it here. But I’m still not a hardcore fan. I know a lot of trivia (because it is my way to fill my head full of useless facts instead of knowing, say, how my company’s prescription drug insurance plan actually works), but I guess I’m not really emotionally invested in it the way Trekkies/Trekkers are. On the continuum of Geeky Things I Care About*, Star Trek is somewhere below Red Dwarf and above the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

So when I heard about J.J. Abrams spearheading a Star Trek reboot/revamp, I was pretty cool with the idea; never got into Lost or Alias, but I absolutely loved Mission: Impossible III. I even thought the way they tried to tie it into existing continuity but spin it off into an “alternate universe” was unnecessary. It works better in the movie than I thought it would, but I still think by paying lip service to What Has Gone Before, they’re inviting fans to pick apart inconsistencies; better to pull the Batman Begins Lever and tell people just to deal with a clean reboot, I say.

I saw the movie the other day, and I thought it was A Good Time. Basically, all those positive reviews you’ve heard are true. It was a lot of fun, it moved along at a nice clip, and probably most importantly, it didn’t take itself too dreadfully seriously, which is probably the biggest problem with recent revamps like Batman Begins and Halloween. I missed the original actors somewhat because you associate them so greatly with the roles (Spock kind of loses something without that wry, bemused quality Leonard Nimoy played him with), but I was glad the new guys didn’t just copy what came before like Superman Returns did to its detriment.

So yeah, I enjoyed it. But…

…I can empathize with the fans who didn’t.

Anytime anyone says something bad about this movie on the dreaded internet, they get pegged as Bitter Nerds Who Hate Anything New. And, yeah, there is a lot of whining about “Oh, Scott would never say that” or “The Enterprise was built in San Francisco, not Iowa,” but I kind of feel some legitimate criticisms are being dismissed by Geeks Who Are Trying To Act Like They’re Cooler Than Other Geeks (motto: “Jeez, just enjoy the explode-y goodness.”)

When Old Guard Trek Fans** say “This just doesn’t feel like Trek” or the like, the counterargument is generally that the original show relies on just as much plot contrivance and shoddy science as the new stuff. This I can get behind: from the technobabble last-ditch solution, to pushing buttons in an exciting manner, to big blustery villains, to invariably humanoid aliens, to black holes not really working like that at all, on its surface, there is not much to differentiate this from the original series.

The thing is, as faithful as the movie is to the superficial elements of the old show, I think the new movie misses the heart of Star Trek, as silly and sentimental as that may sound. And the heart, at least as it appears to this casual fan, is twofold.

1.) Star Trek is a series of simple morality plays.
2.) The future is a better place to live.

I just watched “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” the other day online. It’s the one where Bele (an alien who’s shoepolish black on the right side and pancake white on the left) and Lokai (an alien who’s pancake white on the left side and shoepolish black on the right) each have an irrational hatred for the other. Eventually it turns out they’re the last two survivors of their planet, the populace wiped out in a race war, but they keep fighting anyway because their hatred is all they have.

There’s an exchange in the middle of the episode with Bele (played by my favorite Riddler and yours, Frank Gorshin), Kirk, and Spock. Earlier in the episode, Bele tries to seize control of the Enterprise through some sort of alien willpower with all the attending villainous bluster, but in this scene Gorshin gives a very earnest delivery by contrast—it’s actually quite affecting, smack in the middle of an action/sci-fi show:

BELE: “It is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed.”
SPOCK (plainly): “The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same ‘breed’ as yourself.”
BELE (almost as though he feels Spock is joking): “Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me. (Pause.) Look at me!”
KIRK (also plainly): “You're black on one side and white on the other.”
BELE (as though he shouldn’t even have to explain this): “I am black on the right side.”
(A long pause as Kirk and Spock look at each other in quiet confusion.)
KIRK: “I…fail to see the significant difference.”
BELE (quickly): “Lokai is white on the right si--All of his people are white on the right side!”

Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t subtle stuff. It is staggeringly obvious to the point of absurdism, and I think that’s what makes it work so well. It is a ridiculous premise, and that’s kind of the point. Bele is being ridiculous. The show doesn’t even allow for any complexity to the problem -- it just straight up tells you, “You see how idiotic this conflict looks from the outside? Trust us, it looks just as stupid as when you do it.” Very simple, very nice.

There is also a cool sequence where Bele’s taken control of the Enterprise, and Kirk arms the self-destruct mechanism and basically has to play chicken with Bele, and I think it is a totally rad accomplishment that this is a show that can handle both of these elements equally well.

That’s point #1. On to point #2: Star Trek is pretty cool for its time because you have a multinational, multiethnic crew working together and nobody mentions it as being anything other than ordinary. (Of course, the leader is a white Christian American dude who is always right, but I did say “for its time”). The Federation is a united humanity, and they’ve even got a half-alien and a bloody Russkie aboard! And it’s a golden age of peace and prosperity. The message is: “This is what happens when we all stop fighting and work together.”

The problem is, you don’t get that as strongly in the new movie because it is forty years later. Of course, prejudice still exists, but society as a whole holds this as deviant, at least in theory -- a black woman shown working side by side with white men is not as novel as it was in the 60s. In fact, we are at a point where a spaceship crew made up of all white men would seem weird --even token black characters and token women serve as an acknowledgement that someone felt some sort of need for inclusiveness.

As a result, there’s nothing really daring about the crew of the Enterprise today. This is where I thought the movie ought to have been free to chuck out What Has Gone Before and try something new. Leave Chekhov and his Comedy Russian Accent out of it, and bring in someone who registers with an audience as Muslim and have him working side by side with someone who registers as Jewish and never address this in any way. Openly LGBTQ crewmembers where this is not an issue for anybody as well. (In fact, New Doctor Who’s Captain Jack is basically what a 21st-century Captain Kirk ought to be.)

Is it obvious? Yeah, and that is the point. Push the envelope just a little bit past what some people may be comfortable with, and tell them to deal with it, because this is the future, and there’s no room for your prejudices and preconceived notions. They’re not just exploring uncharted space, they’re also exploring what society could be like if we’d all try a little harder not to hate each other.

So, you know, I enjoyed this movie very much, but I hope the next one will aim a little higher.

*--One of these days I may actually draw out this continuum.
**--It has only just struck me how many Capitalized First Letter things I am doing here.