The recent discussion about superhero fight scenes got me thinking, once again, about what superhero stories are really all about. I�ve written before that I think superhero stories are a �literature of the imagination,� but that only tells you so much. Part of the �problem� is that superheroes graft so easily onto other visual and narrative tropes. You can throw superheroes at detective stories, action stories, horror stories, westerns � you name it. But is a western superhero story really a western? Is it different than a �regular� superhero story? And what the heck is a regular superhero story anyway?
I think that�s a tough thing to define because it�s a moving target. There is clearly something about superheroes, a certain special mojo they have that keeps bringing people back over and over again. My guess at the moment is that it�s a combination of that �literature of the imagination� thing I�ve talked about before and a certain very appealing fantasy notion that by creative intelligence, grit, and two-fisted determination one can mete justice out against the bullies, crooks, and things that scare us. Juvenile? I say human.
But the specifics of what a superhero story is will, I think, depend on the era, as superhero creators have mapped the characters and concepts onto different genres, ideologies, artistic approaches � you name it � as their interests at the time dictated.
The �common wisdom� I grew up with was that superheroes were about �preserving the status quo.� This was in the wake of Englehart�s Captain America stories and, most famously, O�Neil and Adams� Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories. Who can forget the famous, �You helped the blue man and the yellow man and the green man, but when you gonna help the black man� speech? I always wished that instead of bowing his head and acting sheepish, Green Lantern would�ve looked at the guy and said, �I didn�t realize that when I saved THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD I wasn�t helping the black man out. My bad.� I was personally never a fan of �relevance,� because it has always seemed a poor match to the imagination and fantasy that was naturally at the heart of superheroic fiction. I mean, would you embrace �Die Hard IV: John McLane Runs For Mayor?� Did Clint Eastwood ever play a drifter in the Old West who goes to law school to become a family court judge?
You could certainly do a story about a famous hero ex-cop who runs for mayor, or an Old West lawman who becomes a family court judge, but would you do it with those characters? I�m sure that would be appealing to some, but to me it just feels like people trying too hard to be clever.
However, I digress. The thinking I grew up with was that O�Neil and Adams Were Right, and had made some meaningful point about superheroes. Much was bandied about that superheroes were paramilitary, neofascist yes-men for The Man, a mindset that still casts a shadow on superhero comics to this day.
Still, there does seem to be something to this �defenders of the status quo� business. If you look at traditional heroic stories, you usually find a situation where Something Is Wrong with the world of the main character as he understands it, and heroic action of some sort is required by the main character to fix things. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, the tales of King Arthur, The Matrix, every Michael Moorcock story, you name it. Very common stuff.
Superheroes, on the other hand, really do seem to have traditionally acted most often as a kind of special-exemption vigilante police force (and sure, writers in the past tried to get around the vigilante thing by making superheroes �special deputies� or whatever). Someone or something attacks the placid and positive everyday world, something the regular authorities can�t handle, and superheroes show up to save the day. I can see where it would be hard to write story after story from that perspective and keep it compelling. It doesn�t have the same visceral appeal of stories where Something Is Wrong with the everyday world itself, where it�s become tainted or damaged somehow and requires fixing.
Think about it this way. If you always start and end with a positive status quo where nothing significant has permanently changed (a necessity if one desires to maintain the �world outside your window� fiction), and you want to do action stories, what you end up with is a pattern where a bad guy shows up, does something bad, and so the hero beats him down (oh, maybe after �losing� an initial bout or something). The point is that the hero starts to look like something of a bully after a certain point because month after month suckers are sent into the ring just so he can beat them down. Not anywhere near as satisfying if permanent change to the world is at stake and beating down some credible bad guys on the way to that change is a necessity.
Why do you think DC and Marvel do so many �Elseworlds,� �What If�,� and alternate reality/alternate history- type stories? And why do so many of them feel more satisfying and self-contained than �regular� superhero stories (particularly in comparison to today�s talking head-heavy superhero stories)? An Elseworlds type of story can be self-contained in the sense of having a definitive, satisfying end � the problem is fixed or not, and significant, if not permanent, change is indeed at play. It�s hard to get the same satisfaction from a story about how things are good, some knucklehead shows up and causes trouble, the hero beats him down, and things are back to their normal goodness, with nothing significant changed. There�s almost a built-in implication that this is all going to happen again. (Claremont and other Bronze or Mylar Age writers got around this somewhat by introducing the heavy soap opera elements with which we are now all too familiar, the idea being that permanent changes in the personal lives of the characters were at stake, even if we knew the world itself was not going to change.)
But how true is all of this in practice? If I had the resources to go buy all the requisite collections and back-issues, and, more importantly, the time to read all of that material and take notes, here is what I�d be interested in researching.
Superman was the first superhero where everything is in place and the tradition we know and love begins in earnest (feel free to debate if you will). He�s followed by Bat-Man�and then who else? Who else, besides Superman and Bat-Man, were the first five clearly-recognizable-as superheroes who achieved serious popularity?
Superman and Bat-Man, especially in their early incarnations, clearly have at least one boot in their pulp magazine roots (in the tradition of Doc Savage, the Shadow, and the Spider, among others). How did their adventures match the pulp tradition? How did their adventures deviate from the pulp tradition? In their early adventures, did they defend the status quo in any obvious sense? If so, what were they defending it from? If not, what were their adventures about? What were they defending, if they were defending something, and what were they attacking when they were attacking something? (Realizing that maybe some of their early stories were about defending the status quo while others were not, perhaps even about attacking that same status. If so, then what was the ratio of one type of story to the other, roughly?)
In their early stories, how did Superman and Bat-Man generally overcome their obstacles, defeat their foes? Powers? Gadgets? Fisticuffs? Outwitting their foes? Convincing other people to change their ways or take up arms against some foe or injustice? How do the early Superman and Bat-Man stories compare to the other four or five most popular superheroes that followed?
Common wisdom also tells us that Superman and Bat-Man softened considerably from their early adventures. How, and how quickly does this change occur? What are the answers to the relevant questions in the previous two paragraphs when applied to the softer Superman and Bat-Man?
Did Superman and Bat-Man�s adventures change significantly with the outbreak of World War II? If so, how?
I think the next era I�d like to look at more closely is the early Silver Age. Are these superhero stories more about defending the status quo or less so than comics from the first ten years after Action Comics #1? How do the stories differ � in tone, in terms of the kinds of challenges faced, foes defeated, etc.?
I�d then look at the early post-Fantastic Four Marvel stories. How do the adventures of the FF, X-Men, Hulk, Avengers, and Spider-Man compare to each other and to the earlier DC Silver Age stories? If the Hulk and the X-Men can both be seen defending the status quo in their early stories, how so? Are they defending the same status quo? Do they do so via noticeably different approaches? How do they differ in terms of the fundamental structure of their stories, assuming they differ at all?
I�m throwing questions scattershot at the problem, but maybe we�d be able to discern some patterns or some insight from their answers. I simply don�t know enough to even guess any of the answers to the above questions, but if you think you do, even if it�s speculative, feel free to throw in your two cents.
--Chris M.
Posted by Chris M. at March 29, 2005 1:01 PM