Zoo in the head

Beware the stare

1961 reprint. In re A High Wind in Jamaica, I said I wasn't that interested in film tie-in covers, but it would be more accurate to say that I'm only interested in campy old ones. And who couldn't love this one, with the contrast between earnest, troubled George Sanders and the superhuman disdain of the children (so often I've seen that expression on the faces of my own offspring). Not that Sanders couldn't do superhuman disdain when the mood took him - his suicide note read: "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

Swipe me

They don't make 'em like this any more, and I'm not persuaded that's an entirely bad thing: 

Where's the beef?

Here, bizarrely, is the beef:

You won't need telling that this is Sabretooth, Wolverine's arch-enemy, who obviously takes care of himself - or not so obviously, given that, like Wolverine, he can mistreat his body all he wants and it will just repair itself. But let's talk about the source: Shirtless Superheroes, a blog dedicated to beefcake of the kind that has been pumped up by gamma rays, radioactive spiders, super-soldier serums, nega-bands, and so forth - super-porn.

It's no secret that superheroes are partly, and maybe completely, about sex - all those revealing costumes, the shadowy ripples and bulges, together with the constant anxiety that there are parts of yourself the world must never know about: oh yes, I remember that feeling. There are even occasional delicate hints - as here - of sado-masochism. Michael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay played with sexuality and superheroes to marvellous effect; so did Alan Moore's Watchmen ("Did the costumes make it good?" Silk Spectre asks Nite Owl after they've just got it on in his Owlship).

Shirtless Superheroes doesn't have time for all that pussyfooting around with cleverness and irony: they just swallow their beefcake whole, and lick their lips. I always find it worrying when somebody gets over-excited about people who aren't real; when the unreal people are people I get moderately excited about myself I feel worried and sordid. I won't be going back to Shirtless Superheroes. Or if I do, I won't be telling you about it.

Mutations, II

Confusion of all sorts over the fate of the white roebuck spotted in Dumfries and Galloway. According to Sunday's Times and Telegraph, Kevin Stuart, who owns the stalking rights, is hoping to get £6,000 for the privilege of killing it; but the Daily Mail quotes Mr. Stuart as saying "I don't care how much anybody offers to kill it, I want to preserve it and make sure it has a long life."

More, and more insidious, confusions when the issue was debated on BBC Radio 4's Today programme (link available until 15 March).

First, Charlie Jacoby of Sporting Rifle magazine praised Mr. Stuart as "one of these tens of thousands of people who manage wildlife in the UK on behalf of the taxpayer, for free" - to which one can only say "Eh?" Us taxpayers may benefit indirectly from Mr. Stuart's stewardship, but we didn't ask him to do it, he holds no official position, he doesn't consult us on what he does, so "on behalf of" seems a stretch; and one thing the papers seem agreed on is that he runs the estate as a commercial proposition, so I'm not so sure about "for free". (Tangentially: I get really pissed off with the insistence these days on the primacy of the taxpayer - constant references to, for example, taxpayers now owning banks. It is the government that does the owning, and whatever it does it does on behalf not of taxpayers but citizens, who are not quite the same group.)

Then came Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation, finding it "extraordinary" that there's talk of shooting the beast when Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism all revere white animals. How does that work? Mr. Travers also talked about the deer's value as a "talisman", its value as a national symbol at a time of depression, its capacity to help tell "important stories" to young people - possibly through mime, I suppose. Following his logic: 1) it's bizarre that cardiac surgeons labour to keep hearts in working order when the ancient Aztecs used to believe in ripping the still-beating heart from the chest (and the surgeons should stop and reconsider their secular western attitudes); 2) it's OK to shoot white deer in times of prosperity, and ordinary-looking deer at all times.

Nature is more rational. Left to fend for himself in a proper, extensive eco-system, this deer wouldn't last a week. If we just reintroduced wolves to Scotland they'd deal with the matter sharpish, with no fuss or ethical ambiguities.

Mutations, I

Over at Crooked Timber, John Holbo is understandably excited about having been given a copy of this book by his wife, clearly an understanding woman. I too am excited because, as I've already explained in the comments thread over there, this is one of the most important books in my life: in 1982, when I went for interview at Oxford, the trio of dons confronting me asked me what I had been reading lately. Rodent Mutation, I told them. A scientific treatise? they wondered (I was an arts candidate). Not exactly, I said: it's about giant radioactive beavers teleporting themselves around the country and smashing things with their tails (I had forgotten until Holbo mentioned it that they were also telepathic). Aha, they said, and we moved on. One of my teachers told me later that in the report sent to my school I was described as a "slightly strange" candidate; but I ended up going there, and it's where I met my wife and everything. Objectively, it is an appallingly silly and poorly written book; but I'm in no position to be objective.

Footnote: Bron Fane is one of the many pseudonyms of the Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe, the motorcycling vicar who used to present Fortean TV on Channel 4, and who was never as interesting or amusing as that description makes him sound.