ASH: Coherent Super Stories #38 - License to Nil

[Dave Van Domelen]

     [The cover is midnight blue with a white silhouette of a seagull,
      flying towards the lower left corner of the page.]

____________________________________________________________________________
 .|, COHERENT                                            An ASHistory Series
--+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 '|` SUPER STORIES                        #38 - License To Nil
        Featuring Henry Stanley Seagull   copyright 2015 by Dave Van Domelen
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[Excerpt from "ASH Origins: Coherent Comics' Second Heroic Age" hardcover,
published 2008, Coherent Comics]

APPENDIX 2: LICENSED COMICS

     Of course, superheroes like Brightsword or Dragonfly weren't the only
characters featured in Coherent's books in the early to mid 1970s.  Licensing
properties from other media got pretty big in that decade, and also pretty
weird.  The major publishers would even tie licensed characters into their
main universe, leading to embarrassment when the license ran out and they had
to explain why no one referred to those giant robots or rubber-suit monsters
by their names anymore (or showed them in anything but vague silhouette).
     With all of the obvious choices and a lot of the non-obvious ones locked
up by the majors, that left smaller publishers like Coherent in a bit ofa
dilemma: don't get into licensed books at all and possibly miss out on a hot
publishing trend, or try to make do with the leftovers?
     While the implosion of the late 70s left a number of potentially
interesting projects dead at the pitch stage, Coherent's eagerness to play
with the big boys did lead to one licensing deal that almost went through,
based on a popular novel from 1970 and its 1973 movie.  When the author found
out what his agent was about to agree to, he shot the deal down...but the
first issue had already been drawn as part of an over-enthusiastic pitch.  A
compromise was reached to let Coherent print it, so long as they changed the
name of the character.  It was agreed that the result, despite having been
undertaken seriously, came out looking like a parody anyway, so a name change
would satisfy the legalities.
     So, reprinted for the first time since its initial release in 1975, we
present the sole issue of Henry Stanley Seagull!  While the abandoned scripts
for #2-4 were thrown away, rumor has it that Dragonfly and Ladyhawke would
have appeared in #3....

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     I streak through the skies at over twice the speed of sound, approaching
the shining monster birds that threaten the Beach and the Cliffs.  I must be
careful not to go so fast that I pierce the Illusion and find myself
elsewhere.
     The disgusting creatures leave a trail of burning flatulence behind them
as they move through the skies at speeds no bird ensnared in the Illusion
could match.  No bird can match them save for me and a handful of old masters
who have withdrawn from the Illusion so completely that they no longer care.
     That is my curse.  I see the world for the falsity that it is, and yet I
cannot stop caring for those who may be no more than part of that Illusion.
     But it is also my gift, for caring helps me stay within the world and
affect it.
     As I streak past the hard skin of one of the monster birds so close that
the substance ripples like water for a moment before tearing like a
spiderweb, I think about the past that led me to this point, balanced between
reality and fantasy.

               *              *              *              *

     I heard all the same stories as a chick that every hatchling hears, the
legends and myths that no adult admits are real and yet which every child
knows.
     The stories of the birds who can fly as fast as thought.
     The birds who are free of the hard truths of wind and wave and muscle,
who go where they will, when they will.
     So, too, I heard the newer stories, of giant monstrous birds who seemed
to be a hideous distortion of the old legends.  They, too, flew faster than
any bird should, seeming to glide forever up in air so thin none should be
able to survive.
     Those newer stories were terrifyingly plausible.  For who of my
generation had not seen the distant specks in the sky, leaving streamers of
cloud behind them?  Flying so high up that no matter how you pursued them,
they never seemed to get any closer?
     Was there any truth to the tales that they only came down to our level
in order to feed on any bird caught unawares?  More fearsome than any falcon
or hawk, these stony demons were the bogeys of my childhood.  "Don't leave
the nest, or the stone birds will eat you!" my mother would warn, a twinkle
in her eye.
     Before I could even fly, I knew both stories, and had determined that
one day I would outfly the monsters, protect my family from them.  It never
occurred to me that while the monsters seemed to be real, the free birds
might not be.

                    *                             *

     A young bird only a single winter out of the nest, I was obsessed with
speed.  My peers mocked me for holding onto old stories like a fuzzy
fledgling, and the elders were sure I'd meet my end under the waves or
smashed against a cliff face.  
     Perhaps I would.  
     Perhaps my mind had never left the egg, as some snickered.
     Perhaps I cared what they said.
     No, that last one wasn't likely.  Not given how I continued to throw
myself into the air and then dive faster and faster, from higher and higher.
I was certain that if only I could break some magic barrier, some speed that
was just past my reach, I would attain the secret of freedom.
     It was inevitable, I suppose, that I would crash.

                    *                             *
                                                  
     "Where...what?" I gasped.  My entire body hurt, my left wing suffused
with a special kind of agony.  My last memory had been of realizing I had
gone too fast to pull out of my dive, but not fast enough to become free.
     "The tide brought you to me," an elderly voice chirped.  "This is my
island.  Where that is in any terms you would understand, I cannot say."
     I pried open one eye and saw the speaker was some sort of finch.  His
feathers were so frayed I couldn't believe he could still fly, much less pull
me from whatever beach I'd washed up on into what seemed to be a warm and dry
burrow.  
     "Why did you save me?" I asked.  "There's no great love between our
peoples." 
     "And how could I save you, as one so old?  But you are too polite to ask
that, Henry Stanley Seagull, yes?"
     I bolted to my feet, wincing at the hundred pains this brought.  "How do
you know my name?  Did I speak while I was unconscious?"
     "Your name, your life, your past and even a glimmering of your
future...all these things are clear to one who has learned to look outside
the Illusion," the finch cocked his head in amusement.
     "What illusion?" I settled back down, the pain almost blinding me.
     "You seek to be free, Henry.  But you do not realize how fully ensnared
you are.  Your senses are an illusion.  Your body, which wracks you so
painfully, is an illusion.  Reality itself is an illusion, given power by
your belief in it.  So long as you stay in the trap of the Illusion, you are
forever bound by its cruel rules and limits.  But sleep now...you cannot
escape the trap in one moment, and you will need rest and time before you can
begin your true training."
     Confused but weary, I surrendered to sleep in the strange old finch's
burrow. 

               *              *              *              *

     Days passed, then weeks.  Bones I had thought shattered mended
themselves without flaw, but the old finch refused to take any credit for
it.       
     "You were closer to freedom than I would have thought, young Henry," he
clucked.  "The physical path almost always ends in failure, which is why most
of the Free are unimposing birds such as myself.  But once in a great while,
as measured within the Illusion, the dogged pursuit of the impossible is
rewarded by realization of the truth.  You would have died first, make no
mistake.  But you would have died with at least a glimmer of the truth, had I
not intervened."
     I had come to suspect that I was no longer anywhere near the cliffs of
home.  Certainly, nothing I could see during brief trips outside the safety
of the burrow looked familiar.  Through hints and sly nods, the old finch had
implied several times that it was within his power to move about the world
with but a thought.  It was already clear that he was one of the free birds
of childhood tales, although obviously the stories I'd heard had always cast
gulls as the free ones.
     "The elders never considered me one for much thinking," I admitted.
"And what thinking I did, they called foolish and suicidal."
     "He who would see beyond the veil of Illusion will often be derided as a
fool.  Of course, fools are also derided as fools, so don't let a little
potential blind you to your many shortcomings," the finch warned.  "Still, I
believe you are sufficiently healed to begin your real training.  Follow me."
     The old finch hopped out of the burrow and into the gray light of a
cloudy day.  "I wish to see if you are truly whole in body.  Fly to that
island on the horizon."
     "What should I do once I get there?"
     "It will be clear, don't worry."
     I blinked, then took to the air.  I'd stopped expecting the old finch to
be clear for more than three sentences in a row.
     The island was fairly distant, and I was worried my injuries would
reappear and send me tumbling into the sea, but I reached my goal in a time
that while not astonishing, was at least respectable.
     "Very good," the old finch said, looking up from the log where he sat.
"No lingering infirmity."
     "How?  I didn't see you flying after me when I left, or passing me as I
flew!"  
     "Space and time are part of the Illusion.  I am where I wish to be, when
I wish to be there.  That is what it means to be free.  Once you have given
up your attachments to the Illusion, you will also be free."

               *              *              *              *

     The old finch was disappointed in me on the day I left his tutelage,
many months after I had awaken in his burrow and some weeks after I had
Awaken from the Illusion.  He tried not to show it, but I had learned to read
his subtle moods, and knew he was as angry as he ever got.
     "I feel I have failed you, Henry," he clucked.  "You have seen beyond
the Illusion, have mastered the art of Being.  You have even found a
compromise between truth and illusion that few attain.  But you remain
attached to much of this world."
     "I must.  This isn't ego, I'm not returning home to show them that I was
right and they were wrong.  I have no intention of trying to convince them
all about the Illusion...I can see how pointless that would be.  But I sought
freedom because of an obligation I did not wish to be free of.  The world is
full of monsters, monsters that my people have no defense against.  What good
is freedom if I lose my reasons for wanting it?"
     The old finch shook his head sadly.  "I do not see you in the places
where the other Free go.  I suspect you will only find true freedom from the
Illusion in the same way that the bound do: through death.  Perhaps a rather
imminent death.  But go...your bindings compel you, but an old bird can hope
that one day you will be fully Free, not half-free and half-bound."

               *              *              *              *

     The stone birds have finally noticed that they are not alone in their
battles with each other.  They cast about wildly, seemingly unable to detect
me directly, but knowing something is there.  I am the smallest of insects
next to them, but one with a potent sting.
     I can tell that the monsters are as bound by the Illusion as I once was,
for all their terribly speed and power.  They seem even more blind than that,
in fact...I am now convinced that if they do devour birds, it is in the way a
bird might devour a gnat after blundering into a swarm...unknowning and
unintentionally.  Anything smaller than one of their own kind is literally
beneath their notice.
     But their war upon each other still threatens the Beach, and the Cliff.
When they slay one another over land, the carcass strikes the ground with a
great burst of fire worse than a lightning bolt.  I pick my targets
carefully, slaying them over open water, where only bad luck might kill a
fellow gull.
     I will make them take their war elsewhere.  Their war may be only part
of the Illusion, but it is a part that I will protect my kin from.  For only
when I know they are safe from monsters can I let myself be truly Free.

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Author's Notes:

     Seriously, 1970s licensed comics could get pretty weird.  Particularly
the Marvel ones.  The Champions of Los Angeles versus Godzilla, who had
all-new antagonists because the license didn't include any other kaiju.
Shogun Warriors teaming up with the Fantastic Four.  The monolith from 2001
awakening Machine Man.  Star Wars with a green bunny man joining the
Rebellion.  Given the sorts of things that made it into Marvel and DC books
at the time, the counterfactual Coherent Comics would have had to go pretty
far to find something to license.
     This particular story was inspired by taking one of those online
quizzes, this one being about "Books You Should Not Be Proud To Have Read."
The only one of the hundred books they listed that I had read was Jonathan
Livingston Seagull.  My parents had the Mattel-made board game (so, yes, real
companies actually did licensed products for this property), which had kinda
confused me as a kid.  I picked up a copy of the novel at a garage sale
really cheaply in high school and read it.  And thus the game made sense, but
was revealed to be boring.  Nice tiny plastic gulls, though.
     I wrote this story based solely on what memories I retained of Jonathan
Livingston Seagull after an interval of about thirty years, I didn't even
read the Wikipedia summary (although I did look up the publication date).
After all, why be more true to source than any other 70s licensed comic?  My
heavily faded memories felt to me like the story was kind of a superhero
origin story already, so not a big jump to this piece....

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