In the 1980s, DC Comics introduced an antihero character called Deathstroke the Terminator. He was an ex-soldier whose prior career as an unwitting military guinea pig had gifted him with fabulous powers. Deathstroke had a killer gimmick, built on a pop-psychology factoid in heavy circulation at the time—that, at any given time, a human being uses only a limited percentage of her brain. Some said 5%, some said 10%, but everybody agreed there was a lot of brain out there going untapped. Deathstroke, as a result of being dosed with various sera by unscrupulous medical personnel, could use 90% of his brain, which enabled him to be a thoroughly badass assassin and a robotics genius and essentially unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. From my vantage point as a geeky 12-year-old with arms the circumference of Pixi Stix, he was stylish, extremely well-costumed, and indomitable. I was never the sort of kid who felt comfortable rooting for the bad guy, but with Deathstroke I was tempted to make an exception. His main foils, the Teen Titans, were by and large lame, acnelescent drama queens. The Titans were probably invented to appeal to my age cohort by reflecting the gravity of the issues we all faced as post-pubescent losers, but who wanted that from a comic book?
Deathstroke was a psychopath and murderer, but his life had seen its share of tragedy. When we first met him, an association of hooded criminal masterminds called the H.I.V.E. (which acronym hilariously stood for "The Hierarchy for International Vengeance and Extermination"—no mistaking where they were coming from) had done some voodoo on his oldest son Grant, who for years had been laboring in vain to win Deathstroke's approval. Playing on Grant's insecurities, the H.I.V.E. turned him into a new-and-improved Deathstroke called The Ravager by altering his brain chemistry so he could use the full 100% of his brain, every last single cell. You'd think we should all be so lucky, but no. Full deployment of Grant's mental faculties literally sucked the life from his body. After burning very brightly for a very short time, he expired a withered shell in his father's arms.
This concept—magnificent powers that, when used, inevitably destroyed the user from within—was not new to comic-book land. In the mid-60s, the legendary Wally Wood created a group of superpowered cold-war cops called T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents for the declasse (and rapidly defunct) Tower Comics. (Since you're undoubtedly dying to know, "T.H.U.N.D.E.R." abbreviated "The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves," which is syntactically incoherent but was the best they could do.) One of the agents was code-named Lightning; he wore a suit that allowed him to move incredibly fast, but, every time he triggered his super-speed, the suit aged every cell in his body. By the time T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents enjoyed a brief comeback in the mid-80s, Lightning was decrepit, shriveled like a raisin inside his costume, and could barely cross the room without collapsing.
Michael Jackson died this week, and for me he was basically a real-world Ravager, a Lightning without the goofy outfit. (I concede Jackson had plenty of goofy outfits of his own.) No question he had superpowers of the highest order. His singing voice was the equal of anything we've ever heard—supple, powerful, emotive, equally comfortable growling down low or yelping up high. On the mic he was a literal force of nature—uncontrollable, even by himself. His sense of rhythm was unimpeachable; even his casual, grunted asides were like rocket fuel to the songs he sang. He was not a prolific songwriter—he made a record only every half-decade or so, and most of his hits were written or co-written by other people—but the man did write "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Billie Jean," and "Beat It." I have never particularly been a Jackson fanatic, but I'd like you to name anybody else responsible for any three songs that impossibly great. Maybe even greater were his non-musical contributions—the exuberant showmanship, the choreography, the meticulous way he presented himself visually, the larger-than-life and unknowable personality. His musical talent was so singular that he was hard to copy persuasively, but visually he is everywhere in modern popular music. If you're a young performer bent on world domination, whatever your genre, Jackson wrote the textbook you study. It was no wonder that, for a few years there in the 80s, the Earth basically orbited Michael Jackson. His raw power compelled the planet to pay attention.
The flip side of all this was that the guy's life was almost certainly torture. From basically infancy his father pressed him to sing and dance and perform and be on his toes at all hours of the day and do it all perfectly and in time under threat of the lash. He was never a child, which maybe accounts for his endless efforts to make himself into one once he hit adulthood. He went solo, distancing himself from his family and proving once and for all that he was the special one, the straw that stirred the drink—and wound up with no one to turn to. He surgically replaced basically his entire head, blew through kazillions of dollars. He married Elvis's daughter; no one is sure why. He wasted the GNP of Sweden at a cheesy antique store at Caesar's Palace in that famous BBC special. Four years later all that stuff was auctioned away to repay his mushrooming debts. Most notably, he lured other people's children to his secluded estate for go-kart races and sleepovers, with well-known and totally predictable consequences. Joe Jackson got what he wanted from Michael—he got rich, his kids got world-famous. Most importantly, to hear him tell it, his family escaped from Gary, Indiana. But what did Michael get? The more he used his powers, the weirder and sicker he became. And eventually the powers were no longer so powerful, and they could no longer distract from the sickness and despair, and the gossip drowned out and poisoned the music.
Now we're all free. Michael is free from a life I can't imagine he enjoyed, to the extent he was aware of it. The rest of us are free to remember the dark-skinned Michael of Thriller—or, better yet, the dark-skinned and broad-nosed Michael of Off the Wall. We're free to watch him on Motown 25 make the entire crowd flip their wigs so profoundly they would never come unflipped in all the decades since. We're free to enjoy a national treasure who left us a long time ago. Personally I am happy to have him back.