Ring Capacity/Kirby Krackle

Through Sunday, Classics Rock! is featuring songs based on comic books in honor of Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), taking place April 16-18. 

Kirby Krackle (who will be entertaining C2E2 attendees tonight at 8:00pm at Reggie's Rock Club, just blocks from the convention center) is a self-described nerd rock band from Seattle: "We're a band that writes about and from the perspective of comic books characters/nerd culture."  Even their name derives from comics--it refers to a technique practiced by legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby that utilizes fields of dots in the depiction of energy bursts, explosions and so on. The song Ring Capacity, from the album E For Everyone, released last month, is about the superhero Green Lantern, created by Bill Finger and Martin Nodell in 1940, and published by DC Comics.  The Green Lantern refers to not one but several superheroes, all members of an interplanetary police force known as the Green Lantern Corps, which is administered by the extraterrestrial Guardians of the Universe.  So which Green Lantern is the song about?  The allusion to Guarding Twenty Eight Fourteen in the lyrics narrows the field to either Hal Jordan or John Stewart, the two Green Lanterns assigned to patrol Sector 2814 (the region of the universe where earth is located).  Another reference points to Jordan as the figure in the song: the lines I see the man who's made me bleed/The one who taught me everything/A purple man obsessed with me/Soul lost to the dark and it's now extinct refer to Sinestro, once a teacher and mentor to Jordan who later turned to evil and became the mortal enemy of the Green Lanterns.  The band confirms this interpretation on their blog: "The song chronicles a moment in time from the perspective of Green Lantern Hal Jordan after he is attacked in space by Sinestro."  The title "Ring Capacity" refers to a special ring all Green Lanterns possess that grants them certain super powers and must be periodically recharged.  The lyrics even incorporate the entire Green Lantern Oath, spoken by each Green Lantern since the 1940s:   In brightest day, in blackest night/No evil shall escape my sight/Let those who worship evil's might/Beware my power, Green Lantern's light. [For another musical take on the Green Lantern Oath, see our earlier post about Camberwell Now's song Green Lantern.]

Nobody Loves the Hulk/The Traits

This week Classics Rock! is featuring songs based on comic books in honor of Comic-Con 2009, taking place in San Diego July 23-26.

There's not a lot of information out there about The Traits or "Nobody Loves the Hulk," their musical tribute to Marvel Comics character the Hulk, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. It was released as a single in 1969 and appears to have been a promotional item, since the copyright is held by Marvel Comics. The song relates the origin story of the Hulk: Dr. Bruce Banner, testing his new gamma bomb, saves the life of Rick Jones, a teenager who has wandered into the test area, but is himself exposed to the blast: Well he saved the boy/But at what a change/The explosion made him feel so strange/For his molecules had been rearranged/Into the Hulk! The Hulk! The song describes the Hulk as "a monster"--Ugly, oversized and green/His strength is fantastic/And his disposition is mean. The focus is on the personal rejection Hulk suffers (Whenever people see him/All they do is run around and scream, cause/Nobody loves the Hulk!) and the social ostracization he must endure (We don't allow no green skin people in here!). The lyrics also reveal a surprising bit of personal motivation for the Hulk that you probably weren't aware of: All he wanted to do was settle down/And get employed.

Magneto and Titanium Man/Paul McCartney & Wings

This week Classics Rock! is featuring songs based on comic books in honor of Comic-Con 2009, taking place in San Diego July 23-26.

Magneto And Titanium Man, from the 1975 album Venus and Mars by Paul McCartney & Wings, collects an assortment of Marvel Comics villains: Magneto, aka Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the mutant supervillain in Marvel's X-Men series, who was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; Titanium Man, created by Lee with Don Heck, who has repeatedly bedeviled Iron Man; and the Crimson Dynamo (Lee and Heck again), a known associate of Titanium Man and also a nemesis of Iron Man. Since there have been three different individuals known as Titanium Man, and at least twelve different Crimson Dynamos, it's hard to know exactly which incarnations of these villains McCartney is referring to in the song. The three bad guys try to convince the narrator that his friend or lover is planning a bank robbery, and he almost falls for it before coming to his senses: Then it occurred to me/You couldn't be bad/Magneto was mad/Titanium too/And the Crimson Dynamo/Just couldn't cut it no more/You were the law. This last line seems to imply that the individual under suspicion is a law enforcement officer. Magneto is the only villain with a speaking role in the song: Magneto said, "Now the time has come/To gather our forces and run!"