Len Wein: Elegy For A Storyteller

I just learned of Len Wein’s passing today, and feel the need to say a few words regarding how much he has contributed to comics and to my childhood and my desire to become a writer.

The youngest of five children, I was always surrounded by the comic books my older brothers would buy. They were one of the coolest things a young child could be immersed in, and I leafed through them long before I was able to read them.

I handled them carefully. My older siblings permitted me to look at them, but only after making sure I would be careful with them. Comics by their nature are rather fragile things, prone to ripping or creasing or water stains left from drinking cups left on top of them. So from my youth, I was taught a reverence for comic books that most kids my age never knew.

And at the age of six, it was time to buy my very first comic. On vacation, I walked a couple of blocks with my older brother to the local mom and pop store and had a look at the wonderfully over-stuffed comic book rack. I still remember the smell of them, blended with the aroma of assorted candies, popcorn, and bubble gum. Despite all the bright comics and recognized heroes on the covers, somehow my eyes were attracted to a comic with a large dark-green creature on the front. A muck-encrusted man-shaped monster, emerging from swampy waters.

I brought it home carefully, read it oh so reverently. At the age of six I could not have been able to read it all myself, and yet a comic book writer tells his story as much in pictures as he does in words. Besides, I had my older brother who read it along with me and was able to explain anything I did not understand. A legend, for me, was born. Another sympathetic creature the world did not understand, not unlike Frankenstein or many others any horror fan of the era would know. The monster who was not really a monster, who was actually more human than most of the people he encountered.

I followed the series as much as a child of my age and means permitted. I even went as far as to cut the cover off of issue #3 to hang up on my wall. But as for the first issue, I kept in as good a shape as could be expected of someone my age, always treated it as my most prized possession.

As I said before, most kids my age didn’t treat comics as carefully as I did. But if someone had a comic I wanted, I was willing to make a trade for it, even if it was not in top condition. Such was the case with Justice League Of America #101, written by Len Wein. To this day, the name Bob is on my copy of this amazing comic, the name of my best-friend’s brother. Again, the cover attracted my attention, but the story within was what so entranced me.

I had been familiar with the two separate teams of heroes, the Justice League of America and the Justice Society of America, had seen them team up to handle a crisis or two. But Justice League #101 had them searching for a third group of heroes, one whose very existence had been wiped from the memories of everyone. Second in a three issue story, this comic nevertheless became a favorite of mine. For years I sought out the rest of the story, which I eventually found in a $1 digest. It did not disappoint.

Flash forward to 1980, when I was 14. I was already reading Dostoyevsky and Hawthorne, but I still had a soft spot for comics. When I came upon the miniseries The Untold Legend Of The Batman, I already sensed it would be a classic. To this day it is still the definitive Batman story for me. It was written, of course, by Len Wein.

Wein later did some excellent work on one of my favorite comics, Green Lantern. He also turned to editorial duties when the Swamp Thing comic was resurrected to correspond with the dreadful movie of the same name. The comics were much better, beginning with very solid work by Martin Pasko, and then brought to an unbelievable level with the introduction of Alan Moore as writer.

And speaking of Alan Moore, Len Wein was there again as editor when Moore wrote the groundbreaking, seminal milestone that was Watchmen. It was an instant and widely recognized classic not just in comics but in fiction in general (I still prefer his work on Swamp Thing, but perhaps it is because I am so fond of the comic Len Wein created).

Lastly, at least as far I was concerned, Len Wein acted as editor of yet another of my favorite comics, All Star Squadron. As happened in my cherished Justice League #101, I was introduced to an entire cast of characters from the Golden Age of comics of which I’d been completely unaware. The past had come alive again, the deepest of archeological digs had taken place in order to have history’s mysteries retrieved. Generations had been bridged, and once again I had Len Wein, in part, to thank for it.

And this was just some of the work he did for DC Comics! There is a whole other story to be written about the work he did for Marvel Comics, but I’ll let someone who grew up reading those to tell you about them. I’ll just mention one name: Wolverine.

While I at some point outgrew reading comics (at least for a time), they—and most notably Len Wein—were at the foundation of my reading experiences, and you never outgrow your foundations. The vast panoramas he created, characters both sympathetic and inspirational, stories that gripped you on multiple levels, these will always loom large in the basement of my soul, the place where comic books are stored to be read on rainy afternoons. Heroism, justice, a sense of mystery and imagination, these were all things that were given to me by a man I was never fortunate enough to meet. I hope in some small way, Mr. Wein, my writing can give to others what you have given to me.

Bonus Material: Scraps From The Cutting Room Floor (Part 2)

Once again I give you snippets I had intended for inclusion in one of my novels that ended up never finding a home. I think the words are worth reading, they just didn’t go with the décor, so to speak:

Much of our intelligence lies outside of ourselves. Much of what guides us is external wisdom. We intuit it, become attuned to it. We allow it, unconsciously, to guide us. Were we conscious of it, we would reject it as irrational.

To be a part of the whole is to be yourself. Any compromise is to fit into something that is less than the whole.

By the time you’ve heard of a new scientific theory it has probably already had practical applications developed by the military and the propaganda machine.

There are scientific principles that dictate the rise and fall of paradigms, tipping points that overcome civilizations.

The moment of the leap, between the trenches in which we do most of our living, is the epitome of freedom and fear, the edge of insanity.

God created millions of stars to awe us, but we watch big screen TVs instead.

We must deny the opinions of the past or we could not stand what we have become.

The pain of existence is the pain of a piece of a puzzle that doesn’t know where it fits.

The group mind pushes on regardless of the individuals that compose it.

They take the genius of the mind and use it to sell toilette paper, just as they take rhino horns to sell as aphrodisiacs.

At the root of it all is small little men who want to be bigger. So they play with powers beyond their understanding as if they were mere toys.

“A few individuals can swing a herd.”

“Do we have the right to do that?”

“It is already being done, and not by people who have the herd’s best interests in mind.”

Even as they witnessed this the view began to fade. The knowledge faded from her consciousness, but she knew it still resided in the shared subconscious of humanity.

People seek to amuse themselves with distractions their whole life, spinning wheels so they never have to venture beyond the box they were born in, never have to be more than an animal.

For a thinker, discovering a new paradigm is like a miner discovering a vein.

The only energy is life, and the misdirection of it is the only power evil has.

We are defined by fear. Fear limits us, gives us boundaries. The less we are limited by fear, the greater we become, the less we are defined. The ALL is limitless.

Where is God when there is no mystery left?

People have sought to cover over the things they cannot understand, in the same manner that they buried the wilderness under concrete, sought to explain away their primal fears.

Lastly, here are some attempts at song lyrics from The Amazing Morse. I originally was intending to use the lyrics from George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness, but when I decided to self-publish rather than look for a publisher, I didn’t want to deal with copyright issues. For a time I did a mad scramble, trying to get the permission for lyrics from several different less well-known groups and while I waited I attempted to make some up on my own. I was fortunate enough to get the permission of Neil Morse and Radiant Records to use the lyrics of Duel With The Devil from Transatlantic, so I didn’t have to work with any of these.

In the dark I see

Lies my destiny

In a cage lies my freedom.

I’d welcome the darkness

To obscure the truth

Of adulthood’s vision

Eclipsing youth.

Even the darkness is better

Than what it hides.

Even a prison is better

Than what’s outside.

But there’s no protection

From within.

Once again, thank you Neil Morse for not making me have to go with any of those.

Bonus Material: Scraps From The Cutting Room Floor

Like the final edit of a movie, a lot of what is recorded in the making of a novel never sees the light of day. In looking over discarded ideas, I’ve found a lot of bits and pieces that help describe ideas I think are very important to grasp. So I’m sharing with you some rough, unfinished ideas that I feel contain a kernel of insight. Take a look, if you dare.

“Do you wish to be in charge of your own life or do you wish to bow to an anonymous authority, the passionless god that is science? Do you wish to live in a breathing universe or a sterile, scientific one?”

“You don’t get to choose.”

“Don’t you?”

They scoff at me, those who have never seen what I have seen and yet judge. They mock me when I say the Northern Lights portend something. But if you were to see them, you would say, “how could they not?”

Man’s rational mind can create things too powerful for his irrational mind to control. And visa versa.

Groups, governments, and corporations take on interests of their own, become entities.

Do you know what you call a person who thinks his town has the best food, his neighborhood the best people, his government the fairest laws? Happy.

We’re all just human beings slogging along, ingesting information the way a worm ingests food. But it all means nothing.

When a psychiatric patient is on the verge of discovery, that discovery is surrounded by barriers of fear. Such is the state of mankind now, we are on the brink of a profound discovery, but are afraid to take that final step. Our demons arise to stop it from occurring.

Some people live in a mansion and yet never seem to leave the room they were born in.

Look about you, this is nature, not science. Science is man’s interpretation of nature. When you worship science, you worship man’s creation. Science is the act of destroying the awesome with explanations.

Primitives thought misfortune was the wrath of gods. Does science provide more comforting answers? Are we not still left desiring justice? Is randomness a satisfactory answer?

You chase science as though you could catch it. But you are too slow, too human.

You don’t understand how conspiracies work. It is not a massive collusion, it is just group think kicking in. We think our congressmen are individuals, but they are people with a similar desire who have spent their lives making themselves cogs to fit the machine. Our mistake is believing our leaders to be rugged individuals when in fact they have ridden the prevailing winds to get where they are.

Pigeons can differentiate between Monet and Picasso, although they are not cognizant of it. We are capable of many things, too, that we are unaware of.

We adapt to our immediate environment rather than the whole.

The intellect is an evolving 6^th sense, one that is not yet fully developed. If you are not fully aware of what it is you are sensing, you fear it, the way a deaf man would fear hearing sound for the first time.

It’s about power. To shape the world is to own the world. To shape your mind is to own yourself.

The collective must break down the small world, the idols, in order to see the divine. This is the mission of our age, to demolish the existing paradigm in order to see the larger one behind it. It is God or another façade? Perhaps it is just a deeper understanding, a clearer perception of God.

We have evolved to be collectively smart, yet we foolishly cling to the belief that our individual intelligence can help us through the universe we inhabit.