Editorial opinion
We're waiting
’ Last month, an editorial ap
peared in this same spot ap
plauding the Pennsylvania
legislature for acting on a measure
that would allow voters to register
by mail. Headlined ‘No excuse,’
the editorial urged students to take
advantage of the new option, and
reminded them that they now no
longer had a valid reason for not
becoming registered voters.
But it seems that they still do.
You see, of the 13,700-voter’s
registration cards available to Cen
tre County, Penn State has not
received any.
Of course, they have been
promised to us; USG has been told
that they will be able to distribute
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From the editor
Unpaid 'tickies/ no 'di
* Four years, and you finally made itl
Today's the day when you get to stand
up In Beaver Stadium or in Rec Hall to
Receive your diploma. Your mom's there,
your dad's there, your Aunt Hattie twice
'removed is there. Everyone’s there
except you. You’re not at your own
graduation and when they read through
tjie graduation list your name's not on it.
• What no graduation? How can that be?
You and your adviser, went over how
many credits you needed and checked
the requirement sheet at least four times
tb be sure. You never flunked a course,
never had any grade point deficiencies
3nd never had an overdue book at the
library. However, you did forget to pay
that $l.OO parking ticket from the second
week of the term.
' And that’s where they got you. Yup,
one unpaid parking ticket can stand be
tween you and graduation and according
to a spokesman from the Student Traffic
Violations Office, one ticket often does
just that.
The University has a cute system of
letting you know that you have been
derelict in paying your fines. They send a
first notice to the address that you use
when registering your car, usually this is
your home or parents’ address. After this
Marvel Comic madman or literature connoisseur
'Okay, I admit it. I'm a madman. So what else is new, you
retort. Only this. Y’see, I’m not your ordinary, dime-a-dozen,
run-of-the-mill, nine-to-five, everyday variety of madman.
I’m a MARVEL madman. And that makes all the difference in
the world.
See, being a comics connoisseur in this day and age isn’t as
difficult as it used to be, say, when I was growing up (debates
range far and wide as to whether I ever did). Comics were for
the tot set then; those kids who oogled all the pictures, which
was usually all there was to it, since the words weren’t that
enlightening to begin with, anyway. Although everyone knows
who Clark Kent is, and the team-ups he used to have with his
buddy Bruce Wayne, few of us will admit we cut our fantasy
teeth on these titans. In fact, since many of us weren’t around
for that mythic Golden Age of Comics during the forties, our
first exposure was probably via D.C., with its stable of stars
that included Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, The Atom,
The Flash, The Justice League of America, the early Adam
Strange, done by the same duo who later spearheaded the
impressive early Sixties revival of The Spectre, writer Gardner
Fox and artist Murphy Anderson.-
■ Now, I admit that these guys were augmented and sustained
by stories that, in hindsight and maturity, reveal themselves to
have been cardboard and synthetic. Only when the perfect
match of artist and writer appeared the aforementioned Fox,
Anderson and Gil Kane, for instance did they take on any
appeal other than the adolescent. Granted, there was the
Fifties’ EC horror company, but we came along to Its in
telligent brand of horror far too late, too, since it was forced
out of business by the Comics Code. So comics stayed pretty
much the way they’d always been the visual and literary
equivalent of junk food. Without the french fries.
'.And then came Marvel.
! it’s hard to believe, let alone admit, that it’s been almost
fifteen years since Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko
decided to try something new and radical in a field until then
content to remain trite and staid. And, as is the case with all
discoveries, the brainstorm was the soul of simplicity itself.
When Splderman burst forth on the pages of Amazing Adult
Fantasy and the Fantastic Four appeared In their own mag It.
1961, the revolution had arrived. With a vital vengeance.
them to the students.
But they were also told that
County Board of Commissioners
is unsure about how many cards
the campus will get or when.
Some voter’s registration cards
have gone to the State College -
Municipal Building. Others have
gone to libraries and bookmobiles
in Philipsburg, Bellefonte and
Aaronsburg. Still others have gone
ito district magistrates’ offices in
Centre Hall and Snow Shoe.
But Penn State’s still waiting
Granted, the sites chosen for the
initial distribution of the cards rank
as key locations in the area. But
doesn’t Penn State, with its large
first scare to mom and dad, a second
more threatening letter is sent.
This second and final letter, drafted by
Mel S. Klein, Director of the Office of
Student Activities, says that until the
fine is paid the University will put a hold
on your graduation and will not release
your diploma “for any reason."
What’s more, the letter says, if you are
not graduating you are still not in the
clear because the University will put a
hotel on your registration “until the
matter is resolved."
So until the ticket is paid, you cannot
student and faculty population, de
serve equally prominent con
sideration?
At one time there was talk that
the registration cards would even
be distributed at such a variety of
public places as banks and State
liquor stores. Surely Penn State
deserves as much attention.
But wp’ll have' faith. We’ll have
patience. And we’ll have hope that
the student population of State
College is not overlooked.
Penn State represents a large
portion of un-tapped Centre Coun
ty voters. And while making the
cards available to students proba
bly j/vill not cause a massive politi
cal change in local politics, we still
deserve the chance.
Mall necessary, not indestructible
In Ravenna, on Italy's Adriatic coast, the day's work
ends and the evening begins with the volta. The
townspeople gather about six o’clock in the Piazza del
Popolo for the nightly parade around the town square.
The new wives bring their first babies in fancy carriages,
and the unmarried men come in groups to watch the
young women dressed in their best clothes. The old
couples, too, come to walk, holding their grandchildren
by the hand, around and around the piazza.
On the sidewalks along the piazza are the cafes, with
their comfortable leather-padded chairs and tiny tables,
lined up row after row facing the square. The middle
aged waiters have long, soiled aprons as the badge of
their honorable profession. They rush between the
outdoor tables and the dark, empty bar inside to get
drinks and to make change.
A visitor may sit for an hour or more with a single
drink and not feel rushed. All around him are young
couples, families and girls together laughing, each with
a brightly-colored green or red drink. /
At five o’clock 1n State College in central Penn
sylvania, the day’s work is over and the rush begins.
Flooding through the University’s stone gates, the
professors and students and secretaries walk briskly
across College Avenue and down Allen Street. Few stop
at'the stores some stores have closed already and
most are concerned only about making the bus or
catching a ride home.
For here were people who, due to accidents beyond their
control (a radioactive spider and a cosmic radiation storm
during a spaceflight) became something MORE than human,
and yet here’s the stroke of genius still retained all their
human frailties, foibles, hassles, arguments, disappointments
and despairs (albeit heightened) before their miraculous
transformation. In other words, these super-humans (Marvel
heroes are never superheroes) lived, breathed, thought, hated,
got jealous, had babies'(the females, I mean), wanted to kill,
make money and usually didn’t even wanna remain the way
they were. When was the last time you heard of someone with
super-powers wanting to be normal again? In fact, when was
the last time you heard of anyone who wanted to be normal,
period?
Earl Davis
The dam burst after that. The sixties were truly the Marvel
Age of Comics and, for once, I swear the hyperbole was
warranted. Almost singlehandedly, Lee spawned a coterie of
characters that have becpme a new mythology so essential to
our lives that to think of a month without them is pure heresy:
The Hujk, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, Doctor .Strange, The
Avengers, The X-Men, Sgt. Fury, Submariner, Captain
America, Ka-Zar, The Inhumans and the Black Panther. And
Author Lee was aided in virtually every case with the ex
ception of Spidey by the awesome artwork of Jack (King)
Kirby, undeniably the Michaelangelo of the comics field. You
don’t Just passively watch Kirby’s work on his Kreations: you
experience his classically-proportioned, foreshortened, full
page bombshells
Aye, the early issues of all these heroes was responsible for -
the genuine excitement that was Marvel in the Sixties. Lee and •
Kirby, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Chic Stone, Don Heck, Gene.
Colan, Joe Sinnott, Dick Ayers and Don Heck . . . there was
such a rash of riveting talent that you figured there was
nowhere else they could go or do to surpass, let alone im
prove, on all that had gone before. We figured that Marvel
would merely rest on Its already quite illustrious and
By 5:45, Allen Street is nearly empty and the only
people left downtown are in the Corner Room's dark
recesses.
plomies'
pass go, you cannot collect $2OO, nor
can you collect your diploma or pink
slip.
But you can collect a lot of needless
aggravation.
It certainly is heartening to know that
if you play the University traffic rules by
the book you are probably more likely to
get a traffic ticket after 5 p.m. than if you
drive on campus without registering your
car.
Campus police admit that they ticket
registered cars at night in no student
parking areas but dorft ticket non
registered student cars. They say they
don’t ticket non-registered cars because
they don't know who the cars belong to.
They might belong to continuing
education students or family and friends
up visiting. Though, more often than
not, these cars probably belong to
students who have just decided they'd
rather not pay the $3.50 but they save
themselves the possibility of getting
ticketed and missing out on graduation.
University Traffic in action brings to
mind that old Ziggy card saying
“Sometimes I sits and think ..." But in
this case, it just leaves me 'sitsing. ’
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CANAL,
Allen Street, the center of State College, is a
thoroughfare a concrete path people travel through to
get someplace else. Except as an entrance to places of'
business, the street adds nothing to the life' of our
town. Yet for at' least one part of the year, Allen Street is
the focus of our lives, a green and flowered avenue
which is a destination instead of a thoroughfare.
During the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts,
we gather on benches and near flower beds to get to
know one another. For those few days, we hear our
friends make music and watch them create art. We feel
friendlier; we feel part of State College.
Then the landscapers take away the trees and the
flowers, and with them go our sense of friendship and
our sense of community.
The summer visit of the Allen Street Mall has been
pdrt of our lives for several years. We create it in early
July, enjoy it, talk about it, and dismantle it days later.
The Allen Street merchants, the town businessmen
we in our darker moments call the local robber-barons,
are the major obstacle to the mail’s construction. Some
of them actively oppose the mall as badfor business
and certain to become a gathering-spot for un
desirables. Others say nothing or voice small ob
jections and so help to prevent it.
Allen Street, it Is rarely pointed out, does not belong
precedent-shattering laurels,
And then came Conan
With the acquisition of Roy Thomas as writer, and his
adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian brainchild, it’s
relatively safe to say that that’s when the Marvel Renaissance
resumed. Of course, the oldheads 'mongst us ’member
Thomas from way back when he, in the dawning of the Sixties,
was responsible for the fanzine Alter Ego. But his reap
pearance as a writer, which perfectly fused the union of
transposing Conan to the comics medium, achieved a sym
biosis that hadn’t been achieved since, well, since Lee started
it all years before.
True, there was a period during the late sixties and the turn
of the Seventies .when Marvel did catch its creative breath,
grooming new artists and writers. But the seed bore much
fruit, and I daresay now there’s not a company around
anywhere that can touch the talent Marvel unleashes,every
month.
Luke Cage, Kull, The Defenders, Iron Fist, The Invaders, The
Guardians, Warlock, Omega, Skull, Nova, Red Sonja, Son of,
Satan and others typify this new breed of stimulation with, at
the head of the vanguard-being Shangi-Chl and Dracula. The
writers Marv Wolfman, Doug Moenph, Bill Mantlo, Steve
Engleheart, Thomas are splendid, while the artists Kirby
at the helm, Colan, Rich Buckler, George Perez, Paul Gulacy,
John Buscema and others are impeccable. Hell, it'd take
this whole page to name them all. My favorite, personally, Isa
crazy and certifiably wonderful fruitcake named Steve Gerber.
Why? Oh, for one creation called Man-Thing. Why again?
’Cause then came Howard the Duck!
If there can be said to be three turning points in Marvel’s
history; then Howard Is it. Suffice it to say, lie's the most
ridiculous and yet imminently logical creation of them all. But I
don't wanna spoil your fun. Check him out for your own
pleasure. He only costs thirty cents, and what's true of Howard
can be grafted onto Marvel itself: the return in intelligence,
satire, wit, fun, some sly profundity now and then, and ad
venture with an Olympian A . . . you'll find it' all here. That
goes for each and every Marvel title. Personally, I'm a little
partial to Luke Cage, only ’cause I plan to write him one day.
Are you listening, Bullpen?
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to the merchants whose stores are located there. The
street belongs to the Borough of State College, and
hence to all of us.
The reasons the mall has not yet been built include
the inability of mall supporters to organize effectively
against the disproportionate weight of commercial
opinion. The borough council has been unwilling to risk
businessmen’s wrath, and, so they say, the prosperity
of State College, on the mall concept.
From my point gf view, the most telling argument In
favor of a mall is the esthetic one: Allen Street would be
a more pleasant place to shop, stroll or stop If the mall
were built.
The downtown parking problem has made State
College a walker’s town already, thus the removal of a <-
few parking meters on Allen Street would not bankrupt
any business; on the contrary, the elimination of the
where-to-park frustration would be a blessing.
As for the gatherlng-of-undesirables argument, for
the few days each year that the mall exists, it remains
relatively undisturbed. We should not expect the malt to
be maintenance-free any public area requires upkeep
and minimal police patrol but neither should we*
expect mall users to be vandals
Urban sociologists point out that the more we try to
make public places Indestructible, the more frustrated
persons try to make some impact upon their en
vironment by defacing it. We,can and must trust the
users of the Allen Street Mall to enjoy it without
destroying it, just as other public parks in the borough
are not destroyed through public use.
. Once ’pon a time, my comics collection numbered well over
fifteen hundred, with five or six different companies included,
tho Marvel always led the way in digits and affection. For the
last seven years, my loyalty has superceded all, and Marvel has
been the only company I’ve read In that time, and for the time
still to come. The over thirty-five titles I purchase every month
is an investment in imagination and stimulation unrivaled by
any competitor. It’s almost like being married: when you've
got steak at home, why go out and look for hamburger?
So the next time someone tries to make you feel bad by their
condescending smile or remarks, let ’em pass on by in their
splendid ignorance. We elite know what's happening. As
always, the arrogant ones with their noses stuck in the air
artistically and literally are constipated creatively, in
tellectually and emotionally, anyway. Let ’em smirk when they
see us buy comics. Marvel legitimized the comics industry as a
viable art form and honorable calling all its very own. And we.
are immeasureably the richer for recognizing it, reading it, and
reveling in that knowledge.
Imperius Rex!
s; Collegian
JANICE SELINGER
Summer Editor
Mailing Address: Box 467, State College, Pa. 16801
Office: 126 Carnegie
BOARD OF EDITORS: EDITORIAL EDITOR, Janie Musala;
NEWS EDITOR, Paula Gochnour; WIRE EDITOR, Laura
Shemick; COPY EDITORS, Debbie Fitch, Mike Joseph;
SPORTS EDITOR, Bob Buday; PHOTO EDITOR, Barry
Wyshlnski; WEATHERMAN, Scott Chesner.
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NUMBeRON®,
NADINE KINSEY
Business Manager