Micronauts #4 and #5

Micronauts # 4: Death Duel at Daytona Beach Part 2 /  A Hunting We Will Go

Micronauts # 5:  The Prometheus Pit

OK, so that means that our whole solar system could be like one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being. This is nuts! That means that one tiny atom in my fingernail could be one tiny little universe!.... Can I buy some pot from you?

National Lampoon's Animal House

"Sheesh! This Prometheus character is like a bargain basement version of Baron Karza" observes Bug in issue #5 of Micronauts.

Well, quite.

The Marvel Canon Keepers seem to take the view that the Microverse is not literally an itsy bitsy teeny weeny universe; but simply an alien dimension that humans access by shrinking. If you mutter "quantum realm" authoritatively, makes more sense.

Bill Mantlo equivocates on the point. The Microverse is another cosmos, separated from us by something called a Space Wall. Prof. Prometheus speculates that it may be one of many "microscopic universes". But the writer is clearly thinking in terms of sub-atomic particles which have been blown up to planetary size.  Homeworld is depicted as a collection of spheres joined together with little sticks, very much as chemistry teachers illustrate chemical compounds. It's described as "the molecular planet of Homeworld" (issue #4) and "the spiralling molecular chain which is the planet Homeworld" (issue #6). Prior to the 1920s, this would have been tolerably good science fiction. Back then, atoms really were tiny little spheres zooming around according to more or less Newtonian principles, so there's no reason they might not look like planets, from a certain point of view. But it's now 1979 and news of quantum theory really ought to have reached the Marvel Universe. 

Once you have invoked the idea of a Microverse and a Macroverse, it is hard to avoid thinking in terms of  microcosm and macrocosm in the Platonic sense: "as above, so below". Whether this would have occurred to Bill Mantlo I couldn't say. Unlike Jim Starlin or Steve Engelhart, he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who would have been into mysticism, although the aforementioned Sword in the Star has a distinct hippy vibe. But when he needs to bring his earthbound and microcosmic storylines together, what he comes up with is an earthly conspiracy that mirrors and foreshadows the politics of the Microverse.

Professor Phillip Prometheus is a scientist, and therefore, it almost goes without saying, mad. He was injured during a space mission, and his spaceship's automated repair systems rebuilt him. Better than he was before: stronger, faster, better. He's a cyborg, which given the action-figure genealogy of the Micronauts is quite ironic in itself. 

Cyborg was also the title of the 1972 novel which introduced a very expensive multiple amputee named Steve Austin. The TV show based on the book ended in 1978, but Mantlo uses the term "bionic" to refer to augmented humans without explanation. One side of Prometheus's face is human, but the other side is robotic. A 1973 proto-cyberpunk superhero, Deathlok ("the demolisher"), had the same disfigurement, as did a made-up bounty hunter named Vallance in a 1978 issue of the Marvel Star Wars spin-offs. Deathlok and Valance seem to have had half their faces replaced by machinery: Prometheus is robots all the way down. But he tears off half his face so we can see the robot beneath the skin. He is, incidentally, a black man: but this is not relevant to the story and is never mentioned by any other character: a minor but significant victory for 1979 comic book diversity. Interestingly, DC would introduce a black cyborg called Cyborg the following year.

Prof Prometheus is obsessed with prolonging human life. He has robot minions ("humanoids") who call him The Master and obey his every whim. And he has created a kind of boom-tube or star-gate which connects his laboratory to the Microverse. He calls it, portentously, the Prometheus Pit. When we first meet him in issue #4, he talks like a perfectly sensible scientist ("Welcome, old friend") but when his back story is revealed in issue #5, he shifts to Villain Voice: "I can transcend the small portion of humanity left in me! I can become like unto a god!" 

Prometheus is a former colleague of Ray Coffin, Steve's Dad. Ray Coffin was an astronaut; he and Prometheus served together. Before long, Ray will be having an extremely close encounter with the Enigma Force, just like Rann did on the edge of the Microverse. It's not a terribly subtle analogy: Prof Prometheus is the human equivalent of Karza and Ray Coffin is a lot like Arcturus Rann. As the storyline plays out, the two humans will become explicit avatars for their Microversal equivalents. 

Oh. And while he is on the Endeavour, Rann still likes to sleep in the cryogenic pod he used while he was exploring the Microverse. It is shaped, quite distinctly and explicitly, like a coffin. 

In one way, it all hangs together. Prometheus has become obsessed with the Microverse because he has discovered the remains of Karza's Dog Soldiers who (it appears) keep getting killed while trying to get through the Space Wall. The Dog Soldiers have been said from the beginning to be half-human and half-machine, so it makes sense that a a person with an interest in bionics would want to know more about them. We were told that the roboids of the Microverse were a synthesis of man and machine in the very first issue. This might be dense foreshadowing -- Mantlo might have put a lot of cybertech into Homeworld because he had foreseen the character of Prometheus from the beginning. But it might equally be a sort of retrospective mining of his own material: when he needed an earthly villain, what he had already established about the Microverse suggested an evil bionic man. Prometheus's transformation from skeptical scientist to full on ranting super-baddie in issue #5 is rather sudden: if you told me it was the result of an authorial rethink between issues I would not be entirely surprised. 

DIGRESSION: When our heroes first encountered Muffin in issue #2, they didn't know what sort of a creature he was. Later, Mari explains to Rann that he is a "dog" and that "dogs" are extinct on Homeworld. Even allowing for translation, why would Karza name his stormtroopers after an obscure extinct animal? ("Because it's cool, that's why.")

But even by Marvel Comics standards, quite a lot of belief has to be suspended. When he's first mentioned, Steve's Dad is merely a NASA astronaut who served on Starlab. Starlab is obviously meant to make us think of Skylab which was real and in the news. It crashed out of orbit and into the sea in 1979. It's quite a big jump from the 1970s space programme to super intelligent computers that can rebuild human beings; and quite a big jump from being a US astronaut to creating intra-dimensional portals and secret robot armies. Marvel generally keeps the "real world" and "super science" in separate boxes: we are allowed to believe in the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, but New York Police generally don't have ray guns. But even if we can accept that Steve's Dad's friend is a Reed Richards level genius, it requires a huge leap of faith to accept that Rann just happened to crash his ship in the garden of the human being who is his exact analogy on earth. 

Unless Time Traveller planned it that way. 

The Enigma Force is the manifestation of our old friend, The Plot. When Arcturus Rann was at the very edge of the Microverse, he encountered The Plot. Karza is scared of Rann because Rann seems to have inside knowledge of The Plot. When Mari was imprisoned she was able to summons The Plot to get her out. And in issue #7, one of the mysterious Shadow Priest will quite literally tell Argon that they know the ending of the story but that he won't be needed until the final chapter.

Issue #4 is, truthfully, a bit of a muddle. It tends to confirm the theory that the first issues of Micronauts are the result of a hastily executed cut and paste job, a superhero comic and a Star Wars comic glued together at short notice. For one thing, it has two different titles. The main splash page takes us back to the Microverse, showing us Karza's dog-soldiers raiding "the underground" on Homeworld. (This seems to represent a shift from the opening issue, where "the rebels" were specifically insurgents against the Royal Family.) This is entitled A Hunting We Will Go. The first two issues went with science-fiction lettering and single-word titles  (Homeworld, Escape, Earth) but from #3 onwards we've reverted to standard Marvel bombast. Strangely, the splash-page is enclosed in a larger frame, with head-shots of the main characters in the margin, and a second title at the top: Death-Duel at Daytona Beach Part Two. It's very unusual for a Marvel comic of the era to call a story "part two". Although the story follows on directly from the last episode, it isn't really a duel, and it doesn't take place anywhere near the beach. It seems pretty clear that one comic (Rann and his friends lost on earth) and an entirely separate comic (Karza, Belladona and Argon) have been fairly clumsily edited together. 

Baron Karza himself appears on the cover, for the first time since issue #1. Had Jim Shooter come around to the idea that space opera and Darth Vader lookalikes sell even better than lawnmowers? But in fact, we only get five pages in the Microverse before cutting back to Steve Coffin's yard. Anyone who judged the comic by the cover would have been sorely disappointed. 

The Dog Soldiers arrest the rebels: Karza is primarily interested in a rebel leader called Slug. One of the other rebels does the noble "I'm Spartacus" routine, laying down his life so that Slug has a chance to contact Argon in Karza's cells. The astonishing twist is that Slug is, like, not a boy. In issue #5, the captives are taken to the slave pits. (The captions draw attention to their nudity, but the art coyly contrives that limbs are positioned over private parts.) Duchess Belladonna identifies Slug as the captive whose body she would like her mind transplanted into; and we discover that Karza has turned Argon, for no particularly good reason, into a centaur. I think we are supposed to think he has been amalgamated with Oberon, his telepathic horse from issue #1, but this is not stated directly. 

Meanwhile, Ray takes Steve (who has put some clothes on) to his place of work, to show his old friend Prof Prometheus the wrecked space-craft which proves that they have encountered extraterrestrials. (Just to remind us that we're in the 1970s, Prometheus initially thinks that Steve's imagination has been fired up by Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) Prometheus's institution is called the Human Engineering Life Laboratories, but otherwise there is absolutely nothing sinister about it. Rann, Acroyear and Marie limp back to Steve's house to pick up Bug, but Bug has followed the Coffins to HELL, so they fly off after him in the Astrostation (another detachable section of the Endeavour) leaving Biotron to fix the main ship in Steve's kitchen. 

Left by himself, Biotron wonders out loud if Rann and Mari are in love, and the comic just kind of stops: you could hardly describe it as a cliffhanger. The American reworking of Battle of the Planets introduced a comedic robot called 7-Z-7 who narrated the action for the benefit of the viewer; and Biotron's habit of talking to himself feels like a similar breach of the "fourth wall".

But issue #5 distinctly gets its mojo back. (I am not quite sure what mojo is, but issue #5 definitely has some.) It has some of the qualities of the first issue: an awful lot is going on, and we have to keep our wits about us to avoid getting lost. (For example, the fact that Prometheus's orderlies are robots, referred to as Humanoids, is tossed out in a single speech bubble on page 10.) Mari befriends Muffin (the dog) and gets into Prometheus's lair riding the furry pup like a very big horse; while Acroyear cuts through the electric fence with his light sabre energy sword. He says that he using the ship's blasters would be a waste of energy, but we know perfectly well that it's just cooler that way.  Prometheus rips off his own face, reveals his back story, and drags Ray Coffin into the Pit. One thinks of Holmes and Moriarty.

It is often said that Microtron, the short "fiesty" robot is a stand-in for Artoo Deetoo, while Biotron, the tall, pompous one is a cover version of See Threepio. And this may be true up to a point: although we are repeatedly told that Biotron has a kind of mystical union with Arcturus Rann, we never feel he's much more than a robot butler and side kick. A lot of the time, it is Microtron who gets Threepio's lines: this exchange, just before the big battle is pure Anthony Daniels.

-- What do you think we'll find here, Mr Acroyear?

-- Battle! Glory!

-- Oh dear.

Hi,

I'm Andrew.

I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.

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