Frezno's Comics Challenge: The Straight Story Six Part 4 (Mary Tyler Moorehawk)

Alright then, before Halloween comes, it's time to talk about another comic. Really, it's rather fortuitous that it's this comic in this month. Dave Baker's Mary Tyler Moorehawk, you see, is this curious little thing which feels like the House Of Leaves of comic books. No, I'm not doing the densely layered footnote joke again, it'd add another two hours to the post and cheapen the bit.¹ Right up front then, in declaring that this is the House Of Leaves of comic books, several questions present itself. Questions like "what does it even mean to be the House Of Leaves of comic books?" or "Can you adapt House Of Leaves into a visual medium such as the comic book?". Let's see if we can get to the bottom of this. Not to rehash everything I said on the book again, and if you've not read that go over here and do so, it's good, but House Of Leaves used the metaphor of the labyrinth to construct itself a labyrinth of words on the page. It did this in various ways, but the main two were arranging the words on the page to mirror what was happening in the story, and drowning everything in verbose footnotes as either a parody of pretentious academia, a digression into a nested narrative, a mirror of the labyrinth theme of the book, or all of the above. With that defined, let's try and answer that first question. Let's try and pin down Mary Tyler Moorehawk.

Rather than a nested narrative, Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a twinned narrative. On one half, you have the comic book about the titular Mary Tyler Moorehawk, a high-energy sugar rush of sci-fi action adventure awash in bubble gum pink. On the other, a series of magazine articles in which a journalist named Dave Baker attempts to pin down the history of Mary Tyler Moorehawk as an IP, and to track down its mysterious creator who is also named Dave Baker. The latter, just like House Of Leaves, is laden with many a footnote to give context to statements and build a greater history of the world. The world of this book is this fucked-up future dystopia where owning physical things is frowned upon, perhaps even illegal. One where corporations can legally adopt children to embody themselves, and where TV shows have to air on dishwasher screens to get around the loophole of not owning things. The footnotes exist not to obfuscate proceedings with labyrinthine academia, but to explain the state of the world and why Mary Tyler Moorehawk and its creator have gone away.

Which leads us into the comic half of the book, and this is where the attempt to adapt House Of Leaves into a comic book comes. Comics wise, the book is playing with the same 9 panel canvas that Alan Moore and his artist collaborators like. It's all the same tricks, sometimes using 9 panels and sometimes six or even three, depending on what needs emphasis. Where things get tricky are the footnotes. The comic has footnotes, oftentimes bookending dialogue but sometimes hovering over items in the panels themselves, and these go in great detail to explain the concepts and backstory of Mary Tyler Moorehawk. The labyrinth is not made of academia. The labyrinth is made of continuity. You know how sometimes you'll be reading a Marvel or DC comic book, and a character will refer to some event that happened in the past? How there will be an asterisk next to the description of the event with a note saying "SEE SPIDER-MAN #457" or something? Imagine that for like, every person, place, or thing mentioned or shown in the book, and you have a glimpse of the ocean that Mary Tyler Moorehawk throws you into. This is how it adapts a concept like House Of Leaves into comic book form. This is how we unflatten a labyrinth. What's it for? What's its purpose?

I think the purpose is to talk about those swirls of continuity, and specifically big superhero IP. How these things are taken from their creators to serve the bottom dollar of IP, and the creators become an afterthought. It's a tale as old as time in the comics industry, from Siegel and Shuster to Bill Finger to Jack Kirby to even Alan Moore. The mysterious mystery of why Dave Baker, creator of Mary Tyler Moorehawk, was fired and disappeared from the TV show? Because he would not relent his creation to the hands of corporations. It left screens, and yet it didn't stop Dave Baker from creating. The very comic we read in tandem with the articles is Baker's creation in exile, his story and world to tell and create for his own enjoyment, and no corporation can own that. The swirling mess of continuity is not done to sell more comic books, but born from the imagination of one old wild dude. The maze was meant to keep them out, and the shadows keep on changing to do so. The story ends with hope for Mary Tyler Moorehawk's future in the past. You know how it goes. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

Does Mary Tyler Moorehawk pull off being the House Of Leaves of comics? Just about. It even, near the end, uses its arrangement of words to mirror what is happening in the story, just like that book does. For the rest of it, it's building its maze out of different materials, adapting to its medium. It does this well, and has a real message at the heart of the maze it builds. One can only see a glimpse of the maze of Mary Tyler Moorehawk's history when looking in here, but that glimpse is enough to show its expanse. Its creator can navigate it, and no IP farm here or in the dystopian future ever will. I leave the maze be, and move inward myself. Onward, to Halloween.

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¹Okay, you can have one.