A Comic Source of Gravity's Rainbow

Among the cultural trivia which fascinate Thomas Pynchon are comic books. They appear from time to time in his works, whether generically, as in "the outer-space comics" and "marines-in-action comics" in "The Secret Integration" (Slow Learner, Little, Brown, 142, 161), or more specifically, like the "American Bugs Bunny comic book" read by an anonymous corporal in Gravity's Rainbow (Viking, 592). References to comic-book characters are scattered liberally and sometimes thickly in Gravity's Rainbow: three paragraphs on pages 751-52 invoke the names of Submariner, Plasticman, Superman, Jimmy [Olsen, Superman's side-kick], and the Daily Planet, the newspaper for which both Jimmy and Superman work (the latter disguised as Clark Kent).