Halk Kar and Halk-Kar

I realized recently that I've never explained the drawing of me here on my blog, or, for that matter, the name "Halk-Kar".

As I mention in the "About Me" section, I am a fan of Silver Age comics, especially in the DC line. One of my all-time favorite characters was Mon-El, a teen with basically the same powers as Superboy, who Superboy, mistakenly, initially assumed was his (Superboy's) older brother.

Many years after my first encounter with Mon-El, I discovered that, years before his entry into Superboy's life, there had been a character named Halk Kar (no hyphen), who'd appeared in Superman's life, and whose story was uncannily similar to Mon-El's.

Halk Kar struck me as a goofier, late-Golden Age version of Mon-El, so he was never really a great favorite of mine, but I did harbor some affection for the character. When I decided to start a blog, I knew that a good number of posts would probably involve comic books, so I decided I should use a comic book name, but one that was somewhat more obscure than, say, "Superman Fan" or "Green Lantern's Light", and I recalled Halk Kar of Thoron. (That's a bit of a pun, there, from the original story of Halk Kar. He came from Thoron, a planet in the same solar system as Krypton. Thoron is an isotope of Radon, and Radon and Krypton are both noble gases in the periodic table of elements.) I decided to hyphenate the name, to make it stylistically more similar to the traditional hyphenated form of Kryptonian names.

Now that you know a little about Halk Kar, I should explain the picture below:

My good friend Don and I became fast friends when we discovered a mutual love of Silver Age DC comics, and, over the years, we've spent many an hour discussing favorite stories, covers, plot points and trivia. One of the amusing discussions always centered on the fact that each person on Krypton seemed to have only a single outfit --- either that, or they each had a wardrobe of several identical outfits --- because, for example, Superman's father, Jor-El, always wore the same outfit, no matter at what point in his life we saw him, and Superman's mother Lara always wore exactly the same dress any time she appeared in a comic book. Don asked me, at one point, "What would your Kryptonian outfit look like?" I had to think carefully about that, because, according to the tradition, it would be my one and only outfit for life, and, if I should one day become a superhero, it would become my costume.

I described the outfit in such precise detail that Don's wife, Doni (Yes, really.), who is a talented artist, decided that she'd like to try to draw me in it, in classic Silver Age style. The wonderful result, a full-size poster, now hangs in my Fortress of Davidtude, and a copy of it now graces this blog.

Personal Knowledge vs. Google

Recently, a friend of mine opined that, with the proliferation of smartphones with internet access, there was no longer any value to being (as we both are) masters of trivia. While that may be true for, say, Quizzo contests at the corner tavern, there is still value in having sometimes obscure information stored internally.

I was reminded recently of the personal advantage of trivia. In listening to one of my superhero podcasts (Batman: the Ace of Detectives --- Pendant Productions), I heard Robin, who was receiving a transfusion after having been attacked by a vampire, say, "Hey, Daddy-o! Make that type O!" Now, I'd bet not one person in a thousand would get the reference to the Nervous Norvus song, "Transfusion" , from the mid-50s. In fact, most listeners wouldn't even know it was a reference to anything.

Similarly, many years ago, my students, knowing I was a comic book fan, asked if I'd seen the episode of The Flash on TV the night before. I started expounding on the fact that, in that episode, the character of the blind news vendor was played by Robert Shayne, who was, at that time, legally blind. I pointed out that Shayne had played Inspector Henderson on The Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves as the Man o' Steel, and that Shayne's character in the Flash episode had his newsstand on Bessolo Boulevard, and that George Reeves' real name had been George Bessolo. One of my students said, "Man, you enjoy that show on a whole different level than most people!" I pointed out that, the more you know, the more such references you can "get". Again, I doubt a lot of people even realized there were such references.

When the TV show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was on the air, there was an episode in which Buck was in a spaceport, and there were loudspeaker announcements in the background. One announcement was, "Paging Dr. Adam Strange of Alpha Centauri." Again, most people might not even realize that was an allusion, as it were, but I enjoyed it.

It does no good to be able to Google the references, if you aren't aware that they are, in fact, references. It's certainly a good thing to be able to find information, but it's even better to know the information.

Man of Steel. Wits of Lead.

The Silver Age Superman is, to my mind, the greatest of all superheroes, but I must admit that he doesn't always employ the wisest strategy in the Never-ending Battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way. Specifically, he is far from the best secret-keeper in the world.

Any military or police strategist would agree that it's best to keep the bad guys in the dark about your capabilities, as far as possible. Superman himself clearly accepts this premise when he decides to keep the existence of Supergirl hidden for years after her arrival on Earth, in part so that she can be his "secret weapon" against crime.

On his own behalf, though, he sometimes drops the ball. For example, he would be wise to keep the extent of both his powers and his weaknesses as secret as possible, to avoid giving away any advantages to either super-criminals like Lex Luthor and Brainiac or common criminals like bank robbers and racketeers. Clearly, some of his powers are too obvious to hide, like flying, super-strength and super-speed, but why let people know he has super-hearing? It's much easier to overhear evil plotting if the plotters have no reason to believe you can hear them. Similarly, why let people know he has x-ray vision, or heat vision, or any of his other "stealth" powers?

Even assuming that Superman is so confident in his powers that he doesn't care if his foes know about them, we must wonder why he goes to the extreme of revealing his weaknesses, both physical and psychological. Superman's vulnerability to the various types of kryptonite is so-well known as to be the subject of Sunday Supplements in the Daily Planet. It seems that no criminal, whether mastermind or petty thief, sets up shop in Metropolis or its suburbs without first procuring at least one piece of kryptonite. A wiser man than Our Hero would never let anyone know kryptonite exists, much less reveal its effect on him.

Superman even reveals his smaller weaknesses. Knowing that neither his x-ray vision nor his heat vision can penetrate lead, Lex Luthor and others have lined their hideouts with thin sheets of lead. One assumes they regard the poisonous nature of lead to be a worthwhile price to pay for some measure of protection against their arch-enemy.

Perhaps the most stunning example of poor secret-keeping is the fact that it is fairly common knowledge that Superman has a secret identity---someone he is, when he's not being Superman. Consider that Superman, unlike most of his fellow superheroes, wears no mask. This would suggest to the public that he is not hiding who he is, because he's always Superman. People would not assume he has any identity other than Superman, but, somehow, he has let that secret out. Keeping the secret of his dual identity is psychologically important because Clark Kent provides him a way of interacting with ordinary humans as peers, as well as giving him some measure of privacy, away from constant demands on Superman. Thus, the fact that people know he has a secret identity, even though very few know who that secret identity is, needlessly lessens its usefulness.

Superman, you know I love you like a brother, but maybe you should talk strategy with the Batman.

The Irony of Kryptonite

People are using the term "kryptonite" with increasing frequency these days, in the sense of "weakness" or "thing which is harmful or deadly or terrifying to me", as in, "I'm claustrophobic, so elevators are my kryptonite." This is understandable, given the general public's notion of kryptonite as the substance that can weaken and kill Superman, but it is incomplete and misses what I call the irony of kryptonite.

To understand this irony, we must first understand what kryptonite is, in the world of Superman. The child, Kal-El, who would grow up to become the Man of Steel, was sent to Earth in a spaceship by his parents to escape the destruction of his planet, much as Moses was set adrift on the Nile to escape the destruction decreed by Pharaoh. The planet Krypton was transformed by its nuclear death into the substance kryptonite, a green, glowing, radioactive death-dealing horror to Superman.

Here is the irony. The very ground of his home planet, which, in the natural course of events would literally support him and grow the food which would sustain him, has become toxic to him. Even worse, the explosion of Krypton resulted in the transformation of everything on the planet into this deadly matter. Books, trees, houses, sporting equipment, the very stuff of daily life, all became kryptonite. Not only has the ground which would have physically supported him on his homeworld become his deadly enemy, so have the things which would have supported him psychologically and emotionally. Imagine, for example, that Superman were to find his parents' wedding picture, or his favorite stuffed toy from childhood, somehow fallen to Earth. He might at first feel a wave of sentimental nostalgia as he remembered, if he could, the brief but happy time in the bosom of his now-gone family. Almost simultaneously, though, this would be overwhelmed by horrified realization of the threat to his survival.

Perhaps fate, or the universe, strives for balance. Superman has lost his biological parents, but he gained adoptive parents, the Kents. He lost his people and his planet, but he gained the people of Earth, his new home. He is arguably the most powerful being on Earth and beyond. Balance requires a weakness, and perhaps not simply a physical weakness, but an emotional one, as well. Not only can he not go home again, any significant exposure to his “home” will drain his strength and turn him into a green-skinned corpse. Finally, there is one last interesting piece of the puzzle. While it is generally known that kryptonite is deadly to Superman, but harmless to Earth-humans, what is sometimes not so well-known is that kryptonite is also harmless to a Kryptonian without super powers. That is, if Superman were to find himself on a re-constituted Krypton under its red sun, kryptonite would simply be an interesting green, glowing rock. Thus, kryptonite is a threat to the hero Superman, not the person Kal-El. The creation of a great hero requires a correspondingly great weakness.

The life of an ordinary person has more ordinary weaknesses. Fortunately, we have the inspiration of our fictional heroes, like the Man of Steel. As great a weakness, physically, psychologically and emotionally, as kryptonite is to him, he has never failed to overcome it, either on his own or with the help of others. Let this be our goal, too, in facing our own weaknesses.