Daredevil Villains #88: Lifeform
DAREDEVIL ANNUAL #6 (1990)
“Predator”
Writer, colourist: Gregory Wright
Artist: Cam Kennedy
Letterer: Richard Starkings
Editor: Ralph Macchio
We may have finished Ann Nocenti’s run, but we aren’t moving on to DG Chichester just yet. It’s time to check in on Daredevil Annual.
The last character that we covered from a Daredevil Annual was the Mind-Master, who debuted in Annual #4, way back in 1976. After that, Daredevil didn’t get another annual for over a decade. But in 1989, the book got another annual. Daredevil Annual #5 was a tie-in to the line-wide “Atlantis Attacks” event, with Tyrannus and Viper as the guest villains, and as such, it doesn’t concern us. It may be most notable for being misnumbered as a second Daredevil Annual #4. (The version on Marvel Unlimited has corrected the number.) But it must have done okay, since further Daredevil Annuals continued to appear through to 1994, all of them written by Gregory Wright.
For 1990, instead of a single line-wide event across the annuals, Marvel opted for crossovers among smaller groups of titles. Most of those groupings made sense. “Days of Futures Present” had the X-Men, the New Mutants, X-Factor and the Fantastic Four, in a story about Franklin Richards from the Days of Future Past timeline. “Terminus Factor” had Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Avengers and West Coast Avengers. The three Spider-Man annuals did their own story. And that left…
Um. Well, it left Daredevil, Punisher, Incredible Hulk and Silver Surfer. Natural bedfellows, I think you’ll agree.
These four unfortunate titles hooked up for a mini-event called “Lifeform”. Lifeform himself is a marginal inclusion in this feature. But he never appears anywhere else, so I suppose he’s a Daredevil villain as much as anyone’s. And besides, he’s the only new villain to show up in Daredevil in 1990.
As you might imagine, “Lifeform” is an odd story. Reasonably enough, it doesn’t attempt to get the Punisher and the Silver Surfer involved in a single narrative. Instead, it follows the same basic structure as “Evolutionary War” and “Atlantis Attacks”, where for the most part each annual told a self-contained story with a throughline building in the background. In “Lifeform”, the throughline is simply that each time the hero thinks Lifeform has been destroyed, only for it to come back stronger than before, and ready to face an even more powerful hero. Or at least, that’s how the back end of the story scales up – there isn’t really that sort of escalation between the Punisher in chapter 1 and Daredevil in chapter 2. If anything, surely Daredevil and his stick are a step down from the skull-themed munitions enthusiast.
Since he’s really just here to pass the parcel, Daredevil’s contribution to the story feels nailed on. He’s back in Hell’s Kitchen by this point, which is where Ann Nocenti leaves him at the end of her run. There’s a monstrous shambling thing in the city alleyways, and that’s Lifeform. We’ve already established in the Punisher annual that he’s a guy called George Prufrock, and that he’s been transformed into a monster by a virus commissioned by his father, a wealthy and paranoid libertarian extremist who wanted it as a biological weapon. There’s a B-plot in which Ben Urich is investigating this story and, uncharacteristically, seems to be more interested in his career advancement than he is in the story itself.
Lifeform himself isn’t much of a character. He stumbles around the alleys in pain. He gets into a fight with the Wildboys. He seems to want to eat him. There’s a voice in his head telling him what to do, and that voice seems to be something to do with his father. At one point, Daredevil detects that the creature has two heartbeats. Eventually the police gun Lifeform down, despite Daredevil’s attempts to stop them, and that’s basically it.
A feature of Wright’s annuals is back-up strips that loosely tie-in with the main story, and there are three of them here. One of them is a Fat Boys story where Lifeform just kind of passes through near the end. Another is about someone who gets infected by Lifeform’s virus (something which doesn’t otherwise seem to be much of a problem). The third is a Typhoid Mary story, which leans into the idea that Lifeform has two competing minds in his body, and plays it off against Typhoid’s own competing personas. He outpowers Typhoid, but leaves her alone in her innocent Mary persona. This is about as much character development as Lifeform gets in this annual.
None of this is very interesting. Do the other three annuals make a difference?
Not especially. Punisher Annual #3, by Mike Baron and Neil Hansen, shows George stealing the virus in the first place, and establishes that he’s hearing his father’s voice yelling at him. It seems to be just a hallucination. The Punisher gets involved because he’s investigating George’s father for “alleged massive credit card fraud”. Once George starts changing into a monster, he veers between wanting to please his father and wanting to kill him.
Incredible Hulk Annual #16, by Peter David and Angel Medina, is largely built around George narrating his back story while slowly changing back into the deformed Lifeform. This story presents George as a naive and complacent rich kid who views “the Lifeform” as some sort of parasite. We learn that he joined AIM on his father’s behalf (he talks about it as if it were a normal post-college career), and he still believes in his obvious social superiority even as a shambling monster. But he also asks to be killed before the Lifeform rages out of control.
In Silver Surfer Annual #3, by Jim Starlin, Ron Marz, Ron Lim and Tom Christopher, the Lifeform is just growing uncontrollably into a sort of fleshlike blob of eyes and mouths that just wants to eat all life. The Surfer dumps it on a dead alien world. George briefly manages to regain control and speak to the Surfer, and asks to be killed. But the Surfer refuses on principle to take a life. So he just abandons a suffering man on a dead planet, presumably to die slowly from starvation instead. And that’s how the story ends.
As you may have noticed, it doesn’t hang together at all well. The Punisher and Daredevil stories seem to think that they’re setting up a story in which George is driven by the voice of his father, but that just gets dropped, with Hulk and Surfer treating the virus as just a mindless infection. If you’re feeling very charitable, the unifying thread is that George is a harmless fool destroyed by his excessive faith in his right-wing-lunatic father. But in practice it’s just a story about a monster causing some trouble, getting killed, and coming back again until the Surfer exiles him.
It’s not much of a premise, and it doesn’t merit a four issue story. And it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Daredevil. “Lifeform” is Marvel annual crossovers at their most landfill, unfortunately.
Lifeform shouldn’t count as a Daredevil villain- he was introduced in a Punisher Annual.
Prufrock is named after T.S. Ellis’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
1991’s Annuals featured the Punisher, Daredevil and Captain America. And to make it more ridiculous. Strucker claimed that he planned for these 3 specific heroes to be involved. And 1992’s Annuals featured the Punisher, Daredevil, Wonder Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy.
I can’t imagine Frank Castle caring about credit card fraud, he tends to go after people causing more direct harm (I’m not counting the times he killed jaywalkers and litterbugs).
Prufrock just seems to be a random literary reference using the character’s name, as I don’t think with the best will in the world anyone could find the direct links between “Lifeform” and the TS Eliot poem. It certainly gives intellectual pretensions to a throwaway comic book story about a guy getting infected by a mutating virus after taking his father’s advice to work for AIM.
Is this the last we see of the Fatboys, or are they in a later annual? I don’t recall Chichester ever using them.
@Skippy- the Fatboys appear in Daredevil Annuals 7 and 8 and then have a cameo at Karen Page’s funeral.
Gregory Wright keeps bringing them back in his DD Annuals. I think they appear in the next two Annuals and that’s it for them. Chichester never uses them, no. No one should have used them other than Nocenti, especially not Wright though.
If I remember right the Hulk chapter had a bit where Lifeform references the poem by going something like “do I dare to eat a peach? I dare to eat people! ho ho,” which was Peter David at his most Peter David (derogatory).
Peter David at his most Peter David is a competition between two lines for me.
One is in later X-Factor Investigations – PAD found a way to use Deadpool in a sentence (the sentence being ‘Everybody out of the dead pool’, it barely makes sense in context).
And the other is in Rahne of Terra. The local mage (alt Cable) looks into the waters of a lake. There’s no reflection. He muses that it’s because he lost his soul dealing with magic. And he ends with: ‘Oh well, I’ll reflect upon it no further’.
I mean, I still remember those lines years later. But it’s a long walk to get there.
Punisher going after a guy for credit card fraud – silly.
Punisher going after a guy who has AIM connections and a bioweapon, all of which Frank seems entirely unaware of for credit card fraud – unintentionally hilarious?
Was it Marvel vs DC where PAD had a character use the quote “‘Tis passing strange” and the narrator then referred to the arrival of a certain Sorcerer Supreme as “a passing Strange”?
My memories of most forced David lines mostly come from the first issue of his official X-Factor run, probably because his X-Factor was the Peter David comics I have read the most times (coming out at a time when I would often re-read my comics). I clearly remember Havok stating he didn’t want to be “remembered as an Uncle A-Tom-ic” due to being a mutant working for the government.
@Krysziek- I remember in Rahne of Terror an alternate reality version of Rahne called Rain disappears and Boom-Boom says “Can’t you see clearly now that Rain is gone”?
@Daibhid C- In fairness, it isn’t quite so bad in the story. The Punisher had been “meaning to talk to Prufrock about massive credit card theft” when he received a tip about the AIM goons and then one of the AIM goons mentions Prufrock’s name.
Yeah, I agree with Scott. The Punisher is waxing dudes for credit card fraud now? I mean, that’s not GOOD behavior, but come on, Frank… don’t force it. If there aren’t any more murderers around, maybe just take a vacation or retire or something.
Well, Mr. Prufrock is very wealthy and still involved in credit card fraud. It’s not as of it’s somebody who might need to be involved in credit card fraud due to needing cash. Besides, we know from Garth Ennis’ Punisher: The End (the very best Punisher story, ever, which isn’t that high bar a clear, in my opinion) that Frank’s war can never end until the last human is dead. He might as well start with those guilty of credit card fraud next…with lethal force.
God, this was a weird crossover. Cam Kennedy’s art is quite good here; the sequence where Lifeform is utterly unfazed by being stabbed by two knives is especially memorable.
The tonal shifts from chapter to chapter are very odd, though. There’s a satirical element present in the Punisher annual that doesn’t crop up anywhere else; the infection making Lifeform see everyone as demons is something else that doesn’t come up again. The Hulk annual was, IMHO, a big step up from the rest of the crossover, both thematically and structurally…
Cam Kennedy was so wasted by Marvel. They got the guy to work for them, but his best assignment was the Light and Darkness War from Epic. Otherwise, it was all throwaway work-for-hire junk. I could say the same about Alan Grant as a writer at Marvel (a few Epic projects were his best work at Marvel), which added up to very little writing for Marvel. Maybe Marvel had a vendetta against Scottish talent. It could explain Grant Morrison quickly jumping back to DC after Skrull Kill Krew until Jemas.
Agreed about the Peter David Hulk Annual. That was the case a lot during this time. You’d have to buy some real garbage Annuals to complete the Hulk story you actually wanted to buy.
A lot of hate for poor Gregory Wright here! I kind of liked his Daredevil annuals, and I particularly enjoyed that he tried to keep the Boys (both the “Wild” ones and the “Fat” ones) as supporting characters even after Nocenti had left the main title.
Frankly, if liking Wright is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
It seemed as if Wright kept bringing the Fat Boys back just to have one of them almost get raped. Geez. First, Darla gets kidnapped and threatened with rape. Then, Eightball saves a woman from being raped, and the rapist decides that raping a boy will do just as well. I don’t know if there are a lot of bisexual part-time-paedophile rapists out there, but Eightball just happened upon one.
Like, come on.
All he could come up with to do with the Wildboys was unfunny humour.
It all just made me really wish that Nocenti were writing those stories to flesh out her characters instead of what Wright was doing with them.
The Punisher gets involved because he’s investigating George’s father for “alleged massive credit card fraud”.
That got a solid chuckle out of me.
@Chris V: Fair point. I guess Wright wasn’t the most innovative of writers.
P.S. There is a mention of the Fat Boys in Daredevil 359, written by Karl Kesel, and it’s one of my favorite humor bits in any issue of Daredevil. Made me laugh out loud the first time I read it.
@Jason: “Frankly, if liking Wright is wrong, then I don’t want to be right?”
Careful, you’ll summon the ghost of Peter David.
So first apparently nobody likes Gregory Wright’s attempts to keep the Fat Boys alive through the Chichester years, and now apparently nobody likes Peter David’s corny humor and puns?
Man, I’m in the wrong group, I think.
Let me guess, you all also hate chocolate milk, kittens and puppies, the sound of the acoustic guitar, the smell of the air after a rainstorm, and also the very concept of joy itself.
I find the idea of Punisher investigating “alleged massive credit card fraud” hilarious.
Maybe Frank was angling to change careers and aiming to catch the eye of some headhunter?
Just a slight amount of course correction and he might land himself a nice job with the IRS… and legally too, perhaps?
Most forced Peter David pun? Man, that’s tough to nail down. One that I remember was when a guy named Frost got his head knocked clean off. Someone gets ahold of the still living head, and expresses surprise that he’s still alive. Maybe they ask him who he is.
Frost’s response: “I’m a head of my time.” Then his head blows up.
@Jason: I got into comics because I read a PAD/ Keown Hulk comic and loved it so much I had to read more. I was a huge fan at one point, in my teens. Even then, his puns could go from funny to…. not so much.
For a long stretch of time PAD was my favourite comics writer and I still remember a lot of his work fondly. But there came a point – maybe with an improved grasp on English – when I noticed just how much he had to force some of those puns.
Sometimes I still appreciated the effort, but when a whole scene is an awkward setup for a really weak line – that takes me out of it.
You would think that a shambling monster driven by the voice of his father, would be the sort of counterpoint that PAD would have eaten up in a Hulk story. Shame.
It’s interesting to me that Nocenti’s run on DD ends roughly the same period as CC’s run on X-Men. The story of Claremont’s departure was that editorial got too meddlesome and started favoring artists over writers. Could that be said of Nocenti too? Was it a pattern across Marvel?
!@Oldie- It’s highly unlikely. Chichester never complained about editorial interference or Lee Weeks demanding plotting influence. Lee Weeks was never as popular as Lee or Liefeld or as aggressive as they were in demanding plotting credit.
There was editorial interference towards the end of Chichester’s run though. I forget the details because it’s Chichester, so I don’t care very much. He used a pseudonym as “Alan Smithee” for his final story-arc due to claims that editorial interference had changed his story so much that he didn’t feel it was his own anymore. Plus, we know that editor, Ralph Macchio, was the one who wanted Chichester to finally bring back Elektra on one of the worst DD story-arcs ever. Chichester didn’t complain because he had apparently been asking Macchio to let him bring back Elektra, and Macchio refused because of the pact he had made with Miller, but then Marvel higher-ups were upset with Macchio because DD’s sales had been sinking since issue #300 and they wanted some early-‘90s gimmickry so they could start hyping DD as a hot title, and Macchio told Chichester they were going to bring Elektra back now.
Nocenti seemed to have a lot of freedom with her run on Daredevil though. Marvel let her get away with a lot. There were letters telling Marvel to “get rid of the Commie writing DD”, and I’ve never heard Nocenti complain that editorial tried to change her stories.
I think she has finished saying what she wanted to say with DD and was ready to leave. Her DD run was her longest stint on a comic book, by far.
I think the Chichester controversy happened around the same time that Warren Ellis wrote that issue of What If? which made no sense. When Ellis saw story, he said it bore no resemblance to the plot he had turned in, he didn’t even recognize it. He asked to have his name removed from the story. Marvel refused, and I think the compromise was that Ellis got a plotting credit while the editor got the script credit.
Chichester’s departure was itself editorial interference, I suppose, in that he was straight-up fired and his planned storyline to #350 was changed by follow-up writer J.M. DeMatteis.
So many different factors and perspectives to take into account.
Ann Nocenti seems to have started working at Marvel (and comics generally) around 1982, initially as an editor – although she wrote the last few issues of Spider-Woman in the same year.
She created Longshot in his own self-titled series in 1985, then took over DD in 1986, in what by any measure is a long run (#236 to 291 in early 1991) – particularly since she neither created nor owned the character.
Claremont wrote the X-Men from 1975 to 1991, and was a writer from his first work at Marvel (Hulk #148 in late 1971).
The two of them had significantly different backgrounds and goals, even if we limit our analysis strictly to the comics industry. And, of course, the industry went through quite the turbulent period in the early 1990s. Todd McFarlane convinced Marvel to publish a separate (then fourth IIRC) Spider-Man book for his own work as writer and artist in 1990, and Image was created in 1992. I don’t think it is too daring to assume that there were already winds blowing and noices being heard at the background as of early 1991. It is well documented that Marvel editorial gave the star artists of the day a lot of freedom and visibility at the expense of previously prestiged writers, most notably Claremont.
You could say that editorial was being too meddlesome at the time. It is difficult to deny that they were generally favoring artists over writers at the time.
Then again, you could say that Claremont was not as much of a selling point in 1991 as he was in 1980. You could say that the market was not supporting star writers nearly at the same level anymore. You could say that Marvel would be mad not to try to find ways to keep the star artists. You could say that there was significant and increasing competition, much of it from publishers that did not exist as of 1986. You could say that Ron Perelman acquiring Marvel and Time Warner acquiring DC changed the rules of what was realistically possible.
You could probably fairly say that Nocenti was more interested in pursuing new lines of work than in learning how to negotiate the new work environment at Marvel and comics more broadly, as well. And that Claremont felt that he had enough credentials at that time to try his hand at independent creations and other publishers. That is AFAIK exactly what the two of them did, at least.
Nocenti did a few more one-off projects at Marvel (very little) before deciding to jump over to Vertigo as soon as DC launched that imprint. Her Kid Eternity series was cancelled fairly quickly (16 issues, which was the first Vertigo title the publisher decided to cancel). She went back to Marvel briefly, again only working on one-off or minis. She mostly left comics at that point to pursue editing and journalism outside the comic book field for a time. She’s return to comics at DC in the early-2000s, mostly working on Batman projects.
Claremont wrote a really strong Aliens/Predator maxi-series at Dark Horse immediately after leaving Marvel. He tried going to Image and working with Jim Lee snd Marc Silvestri again, but nothing lasted. He jumped to DC with a lot of fanfare to create the Sovereign Seven, but it was considered a failure. It lasted for 36 issues, but Claremont in the mid-‘90s writing for DC didn’t get the attention that DC expected, after the initial shock wore off. Then, Claremont decided to return to Marvel by the late-‘90s.
Neither had the success that they had at Marvel in the 1980s again, but Nocenti wound probably be considered to have done better than Claremont after initially leaving Marvel. Nocenti still got critical acclaim, even though she rarely got ongoing assignments after Daredevil. Although, how much of that is due to her outside of comics commitments, I can’t say.
I should have worded my answer to Oldie more carefully. Chichester didn’t have many problems with editorial interference from MACCHIO. Chichester’s problems started when Marvel was split up into 5 offices with five editors-in-chief. Daredevil wound up in Bobbie Chase’s “Edge” office which consisted of Daredevil, Punisher, Dr. Strange, Hulk and Ghost Rider. Macchio was replaced with Marie Javins but Bobbie and Chichester didn’t get along and she eventually ordered Javins to fire Chichester.
I think that the one thing that the Lifeform crossover and the Marvel Edge office shows is that there really is no good way to split up the Marvel Universe. The three major franchises are Spider-Man, X-Men and Avengers. but after those books are gone. there’s no logical way to split up the others.
It is interesting that while X-Men and Daredevil don’t have a ton in common, they both had extremely formative periods in the late ’70s through to the start of the ’90s – and some of the same talent: Nocenti and JRJR obviously, but also Frank Miller (through the first Wolverine miniseries). Is there anyone else in there that I’m missing?
The year 1991 certainly seems like a watershed year for both franchises, marking the end of a period that had been defined creatively by a handful of writers (Claremont and Simonson, Miller and Nocenti) and the transition into something else. For the X-Men, the new era was a commercial success but Daredevil went into a decade of doldrums.
One thing that late 1970s Daredevil and X-Men had in common was a specific level of opportunity. Both intellectual properties were well connected and established while also being available for daring new talent to make them their own.
Better yet, Marvel actually wanted creators to make the attempt and to give them the time and space to develop a following.
Unfortunately, that is something of a one-shot thing. Daredevil struggles to this day to be more than an echo or at best an expansion of Frank Miller’s runs. The X-Men had a bit more success at getting out of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s success, but IMO the end results are rather mixed.
Just wanted to echo others in saying that the Punisher hunting credit card fraudsters is hilarious and I would like to see that angle pursued more in modern interpretations of the character. Is it a bullet in the head for everyone, or does he make the punishment fit the crime and design an elaborate Ponzi scheme to swindle them?
Didn’t the Simonson “New Fantastic Four” arc have a gag where the Punisher shows up at Monster Island on a tip?
‘90s Punisher was busy.
That said, I can imagine that the Punisher saw the credit card fraud as a possible way of funding something illegal, and thus grounds for further investigation.
@ Michael – I wonder if that atrocious “Over the Edge” crossover where Punisher kills Nick Fury is going to provide any fodder for this feature.
@TimXP: I’m super into the idea of Frank Castle as Marvel’s answer to The Spectre. I like to think of him concentrating real hard, chin on fist, to figure out how to make his punishments ironic.
Thom h.
Is not Frank as Marvels spectre what marvel knights punisher was. Brought back from death to kill bad people with holy guns given to him by angels
I’ve only got the last two issues of Lifeform for the particular creators (Angel Medina, Jim Starlin) but I am intrigued by the idea of Gregory Wright coloring Cam Kennedy.
The bit of PAD’s writing in the Hulk annual for Lifeform was not the puns but a discussion of if villains know they’re villains or if they think they’re doing good. And Hitler is used as an example of someone starting with good intentions. Nope!
Well, if wanting to grab power is a “good intention” to start with, I guess Hitler can apply. It’s been a long time since I read the Hulk Annual (probably found it in 2005 when I was buying the Peter David Hulk back-issues), but that’s a very weird opinion from David considering other positions he took up in his life (and it must be David’s idea, as it’s not as if it fits well with a character in the story that David is only writing in the voice of said character). Unless the argument was that Hitler wouldn’t have seen himself as a villain, which is probably accurate.
In his Fallen Angel series, PAD had a supporting character named
“Dolf
The owner of Furor’s, a Bete Noire bar in which violence is prohibited.[46] Dolf allows Lee to use Furors as a base of operations, and is indeed quite protective of her, christening her “The Fallen Angel”.[32] It is implied that Dolf may be Adolf Hitler; in addition to the name of his bar’s similarity to Hitler’s title of Führer, Dolf claims that he has been a painter, a writer, “dabbled” in politics, and made enemies.[16] He also owns a World War II-era Walther P38 pistol. When asked if he is a collector, Dolf again responds, “I dabble”.[41] Dolf has also indicated that he considers dark skin to be an indicator of “an inferior creature, barely above an animal…certainly not human”.[47]”
When questioned about this, PAD said wouldn’t Hitler try to make amends if he were still around?
Keep in mind before WWII, Hitler was praised in the New York Times among others for reviving Germany. After the Molotov-Ribbenoff Pact and before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the left defended him as a victim of British imperialism.
@neutrino- The reason why much of the left defended him after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was because it was subservient to Stalin and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact enabled Stalin to annex eastern Poland, Moldova and the Baltics.
Yes, it led to a major split among Communists, as many left the movement saying that they were opposed to fascism and considered it a betrayal that the USSR would sign a non-aggression pact with the Nazis. A number of far Left ex-Communists went on to oppose WWII, saying it was a war between two imperialisms and that US democracy shouldn’t be getting involved on the side of Stalin who was as bad as Hitler.
Also, yes, many had praise for Hitler prior to 1935, and at that time, maybe it was possible to equate Hitler with having initial good intentions (“He just wants to make Germany great again.”), but there’s a lot more to the history that became known after that point which takes away the idea that Hitler was simply planning to turn the government over to others or restore the monarchy, as he always intended to centralize power and declare a totalitarian dictatorship under the Party. If Peter David wrote that Hitler “started off with good intentions” in 1936 it might be understandable, writing it in 1990 is a weird take for David.
@Michael: That’s the point, Hitler’s status as evil fluctuated, even among elites that considered themselves the most moral and intelligent.
@Chris V: That spilt was exaggerated. Most followed Stalin. The ones who objected to allying with him were mostly Trotskyites. (During WWII, “fascism” meant Mussolini’s government.
Hitler never claimed to be a Jeffersonian democrat, and while he may have allied with the Monarchists trying to use each other), he wasn’t one. He laid out his philosophy in Mein Kampf in 1925.
“He announced that he wanted to destroy the parliamentary system completely, believing it to be corrupt in principle, as those who reach power are inherent opportunists.”
” Hitler’s stated aim, Kuehnelt-Leddihn writes, is to quash individualism in furtherance of political goals:
When Hitler and Mussolini attack the “western democracies” they insinuate that their “democracy” is not genuine. National Socialism envisages abolishing the difference in wealth, education, intellect, taste, philosophy, and habits by a leveling process which necessitates in turn a total control over the child and the adolescent. Every personal attitude will be branded — after communist pattern — as “bourgeois”, and this in spite of the fact that the bourgeois is the representative of the most herdist class in the world, and that National Socialism is a basically bourgeois movement. In Mein Kampf, Hitler repeatedly speaks of the “masses” and the “herd” referring to the people. The German people should probably, in his view, remain a mass of identical “individuals” in an enormous sand heap or ant heap, identical even to the color of their shirts, the garment nearest to the body.[39]”
A strong central government was also sought by communists and progressives like Woodrow Wilson. You may not like Hitler’s beliefs, but he was sincere about them. To quote Reinhold Niebur, “Most of the evil in this world does not come from evil people. It comes from people who consider themselves good.”
[…] the scene, with Gregory Wright Cam Kennedy, and Ron Garney introducing readers to the pithily named Lifeform and (ahem) The […]