"A World He Never Made!" 1 1

[Happy Noodle Boy]

What the heck does this mean?

I've seen it a whole bunch of times proclaimed on Marvel covers as if it was some ancient proverb laden with tremendous philosophical import. Did Stan just make it up off the top of his head? Of course "he" (the Hulk, Howard the Duck, the Silver Surfer, whoever) never "made" the world. The world was created by cosmic forces. Seriously: every time I see this line I'm befuddled. What does it mean?

[THE_BEYONDER]

According to Google:

 

It's a literary reference to a line in the A.E. Houseman poem "The Laws of God, the Laws of Man":

...I, a stranger and afraid

In a world I never made....

Marvel has long been known for their allusions to classic poetry.

[THE_BEYONDER]

[THE_BEYONDER]

 

 

The Laws of God, The Laws of Man

• • by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)

     

• The laws of God, the laws of man,
  He may keep that will and can;
  Not I: let God and man decree
  Laws for themselves and not for me;
  And if my ways are not as theirs
  Let them mind their own affairs.
  Their deeds I judge and much condemn,
  Yet when did I make laws for them?
  Please yourselves, say I, and they
  Need only look the other way.
  But no, they will not; they must still
  Wrest their neighbor to their will,
  And make me dance as they desire
  With jail and gallows and hell-fire.
  And how am I to face the odds
  Of man’s bedevilment and God’s?
  I, a stranger and afraid
  In a world I never made.
  They will be master, right or wrong;
  Though both are foolish, both are strong.
  And since, my soul, we cannot fly
  To Saturn nor to Mercury,
  Keep we must, if keep we can,
  These foreign laws of God and man.

[BuscemasAvengers]

[BuscemasAvengers]

[BuscemasAvengers]

[LowGradeBronze]

I'm betting it's had zero outings in the post Stan Lee Marvel universe.

[KirbyJack]

This one I’m putting on Roy Thomas.

[shadroch]

Most of us live in a world we have made for ourselves.  We choose where to live; we pick the people we associate with, the causes we support, and what we watch and listen to.  People would be surprised how much their past decisions have designed their present.  These days, your past even affects the news stories and ads you receive.

Being ripped out of that protective womb and cast into foreign situations like a fish out of water is being in a world you didn't make.  I associate it more with Gulliver's Travel and Robinson Caruso than Marvel.

[lizards2]

On 12/16/2023 at 9:29 AM, shadroch said:

Most of us live in a world we have made for ourselves.  We choose where to live; we pick the people we associate with, the causes we support, and what we watch and listen to.  People would be surprised how much their past decisions have designed their present.  These days, your past even affects the news stories and ads you receive.

Being ripped out of that protective womb and cast into foreign situations like a fish out of water is being in a world you didn't make.  I associate it more with Gulliver's Travel and Robinson Caruso than Marvel.

The entitled brats of the latest generations feel that they are trapped in a world that they never made and continue to make bad decisions that insure they stay where they are at.

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 12/16/2023 at 12:29 PM, KirbyJack said:

This one I’m putting on Roy Thomas.

Absolutely

[bronze_rules]

I usually think of or recall this statement as "Trapped In a World He Never Made." To me it's like a fish out of water.

The hero is trapped (as many of us feel everyday) in a world they must struggle to survive through. 

Excellent explanations about Marvel lifting from poetry and literature in this link about MARVEL'S HISTORY OF QUOTING POETRY IN ITS COMIC BOOKS.

 

In the next issue, the Howard the Duck feature by Gerber and Brunner (with Tom Palmer now on inks) opens by describing Howard as a "strange fowl in a stranger land"...

This is a reference to the Robert Heinlen novel, Stranger in a Strange Land...

 

Which, in turn, is a reference to Exodus 2:22 in the Bible, “And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

That story led to Howard getting his own ongoing series, and the tagline for the book, right there on the cover, was "Trapped in a world he never made"...

The line is from the A.E. Housman poem, "The Laws of God, the Laws of Man"....

 

Obviously, "trapped" is added, but the gist is there. And so now you know the origins of Howard the Duck's famous tagline!

 

 

Edited December 16, 2023 by bronze_rules

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 12/16/2023 at 2:36 PM, bronze_rules said:

I usually think or recall this statement as "Trapped In a World He Never Made." To me it's like a fish out of water.

The hero is trapped (as many of us feel everyday) in a world they must struggle to survive through. 

That’s the tagline for Howard the Duck 

[bronze_rules]

On 12/16/2023 at 11:38 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

That’s the tagline for Howard the Duck 

Yep, Howard the Duck was my first thought. I was actually surprised to see it elsewhere without the trapped.