Continued From Yesterday;

6.
"Clark Decided He Must Turn His Titanic Strength Into Channels That Would Benefit Mankind"

I. What's most remarkable about the persistent attempts to ascribe "pop-fascist" meaning to the superhero is how the pro-democratic narrative traditions of the genre are so readily ignored. It's as if the simple fact that superheroes tend to close their conflicts with violent punch-ups, combined with their habit of paradoxically breaking the law in order to maintain it, must mean that an authoritarian message is encoded within their adventures. This is such an odd position to take, rooted as it is in a puritanical left-wing ideology that perceives both the expression of power and the belief in the virtue of individual action as being by their very nature against the interests of the "people". (It's as if a perfect world would be by definition one in which conflict never had to be closed by coercion, and in which individuals would only take action when sanctioned and directed by the collective, and it's as idiotic a philosophy as that of its opposing political fairy story, Libertarianism.) Particularly perplexing is how "theorists" from Wertham onwards have abstracted the superheroes' typical methods and considered them in isolation from their typical ends, as if the very fact of punch-ups and law-bending is of itself proto-fascist regardless of why it occurs. Now, putting to one side the fact that this all places practically every adventure story that hasn't been deliberately written to extreme-left-of-centre principles in history into the camp of the fascist, wouldn't it surely be sensible to take into account whatever it is that the superhero wants, sacrifices for, and, perhaps, even sanctifies by all that effort and spandex? Isn't it important to consider why the superhero fights as well as how all that aggressive fighting gets done?


II. There is in fact an entire long-standing sub-genre of superhero tales where the cape'n'spandex brigade seek to overthrow constitutional government and impose "order" on the world. By casting an eye over these stories, the reader can quickly be disabused of the notion that the meaning of the superhero is to be found solely in his or her violent methods. For though much of the M.O. of the superheroes presented in the pages of, for example, the"Squadron Supreme" and the "Watchmen", is as violent and illicit as any other costumed adventure tale, the meaning ascribed to the punch-ups and energy-blasting is quite different. Put simply, the fact that the superhero hits things and breaks the law doesn't determine the purpose of the text: what determines that is the end that the superhero is fighting for. And in the case of the above-mentioned books, and in all those of the "superhero-gone-wrong" sub-genre, the closure of these tales is always the same; the citizenry themselves have been fundamentally damaged by the superheroes' attempts to accrue political power to themselves, for whatever apparently good reason, and society can only be saved by some kind of action to remove the super-folks from their abuse of due process. (*4)

In "Watchmen", for example, the consequence of the costumed heroes helping to suppress human rights at home and abroad is in part the strengthening of the perpetual Nixonian dictatorship. (From what we can tell, Nixon has fixed the system so he's in place for pretty much forever. It may look like a democratic society, but the sense is that the system is neither legal nor benign, as we'd expect from an America so ruled by the trickiest of Dickies.) And none of the "Watchmen" survive that process without becoming either disconnected or emasculated individuals. They certainly don't continue as superheroes. Regardless of what Mr Moore and Mr Gibbons meant the meaning of their text to be, the fact is that fighting for the wrong side precedes the emasculation and enforced retirement of their "heroes". And however cynically the reader might approach "Watchmen", it's hard not to see the suppression of the prison riot by three of the superheroes later in the text as marking a point where the narrative gathers the force and power generated by the "democratic" metaphor underlying the appeal of the super-hero. By shifting from suppressing the freedoms of both Vietnam and America to taking on the Nixonian corruption of the prison where Rorscach is incarcerated, Nite-Owl and Silk Spectre become impressive and superheroic figures again, rather than sad purposeless individuals in daft costumes. Yet it's not the fact that they're suddenly acting violently that re-creates them as superheroes, for if they were attacking a meeting of civil rights protesters, we'd not be engaged on their side, though we might enjoy the detail of the incident. No, we fall into line behind them during their attempt to free Rorscach, despite the distrust and even contempt in places for the idea of superheroes in Alan Moore's script, because they're taking on the corruption of an undemocratic state. And in doing so, characters which at first seemed daft and rather pathetic become impressive and admirable. It's not being a violent superhero that does that, but rather being a violent superhero in the right cause.

Democracy doesn't just make every man a king. It makes most every well-intentioned costumed oddity a superhero too.


III. All of which raises the odd prospect that perhaps Rorscach's worrying appeal lies not in his violent psychopathy, but rather in the reader's understanding on the level of symbols that his single-mindedness and, yes, madness, is what's required for a superhero to persevere all alone in a world that's stranded as far from hopeful democratic principles as the one in "Watchmen" is.

Just a thought, of course. Perhaps the conclusion drawn from "The Dark Knight" and "Watchman" by so many editorial staff and creators - that brutal violence appeals of itself to the audience - utterly missed the point. It would at least explain why the overwhelming majority of nasty little brutish superheroes which have followed in the wake of Rorshach and the Dark Knight have failed to resonate lastingly with the mass audience at all. Perhaps its the symbolic relationship between the level of violence expressed by a particular superhero and the absence of democratic principle and freedom present in the state they operate within that counts in winning audiences over. If so, Rorshach "works" in part because of the squalid, hopeless, and democratically-constrained circumstances Mr Moore and Mr Gibbons place him in.

But drop Walter Kovacs into a typical summer's day street scene in Action Comics or Spider-Man and he'll be just another pathetic, loony, self-deluding public menace, and no one will care for him except at best to laugh at him and pass onwards, no matter how nifty the shifting designs on his mask might be.

IV. The fact that the superhero tale simply will not work if the protagonists are fascist in their intent can even be illustrated with reference to Mark Millar's "The Authority", where a team of superheroes are shown to be effectively taking over the world in a laudable defiance of apparently unfreely-elected governments. Yet Mr Millar's narrative has had to significantly twist the traditional components of the superhero tale in order to help the reader swallow such a story. Or, to put it another way, a standard-model superfolks story wouldn't permit a fascist meaning to be sympathetically presented to the audience, and so Mr Millar has to have it that the governments of the Authority's Earth are all utterly un-democratic and unworthy of our support. Consequently, the Authority by contrast can be represented as standing for the best intentions of right-on Hampstead socialism. Of course, this re-weighting of the elements of the familiar superhero plot in order to make the reader associate with the frankly anti-democratic Authority does rather weaken the book's satirical intent. For Mr Millar has so loaded the dice that there's no point in the satirical game, though the tales are in parts still fun to read. Yet if Mr Millar really wanted to discuss the elements of the superhero tale which were apparently "pop-fascist", he ought to have had at least depicted recognisably real-world Western governments facing down his super-characters. But then, for all their weaknesses, stupidity and partial allegiance to sectional interests, having a believable US or UK Government in "The Authority" would immediately have revealed how Jenny Sparks and her super-powered troops were in truth the tale's fascists, puncturing the meaning and intent of the book at birth.

You just can't mess with that anti-pop-fascist metaphor, regardless of what the experts tell us, for the superhero doesn't exist as a character in isolation from the traditions of the society that it was born in. And even in its most emasculated form, even in the depths of the frightened fifties when the Comics Code and low ambitions led to every superhero being an accredited boy scout or girl guide serving their local city, the underlying truth was there: the superhero only acts when the system fails to prevent citizens from being preyed on by more powerful interests. And so, up pops the superhero, not solving the problem, because the same fights will have to be fought tomorrow and tomorrow and the day after that, but by their presence pointing out that the state isn't either, though it surely could.

Helping out the powers-that-be to do their job better, rather than replacing them, is the only way that the superhero tale as traditionally constituted can work. The superhero helps individuals against the over-powerful, and thereby saves the democratic state. There is, after all, a word for a costumed character who takes power away from the people and the state and rules instead for themselves, no matter how sympathetically they're portrayed, and that word is "super-villain".


7. "You, Who Sacrificed Your Life To Save Mine, Have Been Avenged"

I.
The superhero, therefore, operates in that conceptual space between the ideals which the state preaches to its citizens and the deeds that occur in a democratic society. And the superhero is a symbol of the desire for people to live in a society where everyone does what they say they will, and where those stated intentions are founded on constitutional principles. All of which explains why the mask is so important in the superhero tale, since the superhero traditionally doesn't act for themselves, but for the community. The superhero isn't seeking to lead the people, or even to suggest that someone such as themselves does, but rather demands by their very existence that anybody who assumes responsibility plays by the rules of the game. The business of restoring the game to its default "fair" setting is of course naive, but it's exactly the same kind of naivety which initially powered the civil rights movement, and feminism, and worker's rights, and so on, the so-called "naivety" which suggests that our common values ought to underpin our common social existence. And so the superhero, in their bright colours or their dark threatening uniforms, are there to close that space between rhetoric and practise. The mask protects them while they do so, and also protects the very thing they're fighting for, namely their everyday lives, for the superhero is fighting to have a normal existence where the costume is unnecessary. The superhero doesn't seek to be a superhero, but a redundant superhero, and not a leader, but a citizen.

II. And I'd suggest that most attempts to mess with this formula where the superhero tale is concerned miss the point that readers in the West have a tremendous, albeit it naive, wellspring of emotional affection for the vague principles of fairness which the state and its media constantly trumpet. Readers of superheroes don't want radical changes to society, and that's just as well, because the superhero hasn't been by intention and chance designed to deliver that. Superheroes, like Cincinnatus, disappear back to their equivalent of the farm when the need for the fighting is over. All of which, I'd suggest, is why radical theorists have usually either ignored the superhero or held it in contempt. (Gloria Steinem's understanding of Wonder Woman as an enabling force for women of all ages is one noble exception to the rule.) Somewhere in the revolutionary mind is the awareness that the superhero is never going to be with the programme that advocates the barricades going up and the fundamental structures of society being redrawn. For if and when that happens, the same conceptual purpose that has Batman pursue the Joker and Captain America track down the Secret Empires' President Nixon will, in the reader's imagination, also see Superman taking on the new fascist or communist vanguard. For if the superhero is disappointed by democracy in practise but not theory, the superhero is appalled and disgusted by authoritarianism.


III. The superhero, therefore, likes the West pretty much as it as, albeit with the radical proviso that bullied children should have the protection of supportive teachers, that scared citizens should be able to look to the guardianship of the state, and that disadvantaged stratas should be able to look to the government for support rather than oppression. And oddly enough, wherever the superhero is placed, in whatever culture they're positioned, they have the same fondness for what the West regards as fundamental political and social rights. And if a "foreign" superhero should be portrayed as serving, or even ruling, an undemocratic state, then they'll stand revealed as being no superhero at all. At best, they'll be portrayed as an untrustworthy anti-hero, but mostly, they'll be super-villains.

Mom's apple pie. Baseball. Squirrel Girl.

It's not the violence and the illegality that counts, it's the purpose.

IV. And so the superhero is only adolescent if we believe that the world is fair and consider that a citizen in the West has nothing to be scared of where the powers-that-be in our nations are concerned, and only fascist if the esteemed cultural commentator making such a point ignores what fascism actually is and how the superhero works in the context of the very society that created it.


8. "And I Shall Shed My Light Over Dark Evil ... "

I. It's noticeable that where there are examples of superheroes acting in an extreme way to undermine democracy through their actions rather than their intent, the narrative nearly always draws attention to the fact. When, for example, the current "X-Force" ignores due process to such a degree that assassination becomes a commonplace practise, the immorality of this is regularly referred to and debated by those X-men who know of the whole murderous business. To say that this debate in "X-Force" has been presented in a sophisticated, balanced or convincing manner wouldn't be possible, I'm afraid. (What's more, the appeal of Wolverine alone depends on Marvel turning a blind eye in part to that character being regularly used in often unnecessarily unsavoury ways.) But even at the worst extremes of such tales, superheroes who kill independent of legal sanction are typically enmeshed in a debate where the main assumptions of the text are that such extraordinary and illegal acts must be at the very least justified and never committed on a whim. And so even when the laws of a democracy are being broken by superheroes to a deeply worrying degree, the representation of this tends to take place within the terms of a democratic argument. So, no matter how certain strips try to normalise the business of extreme immorality and illegality, the context of the superhero narrative still as a whole strains to control the profoundly anti-democratic nature of such stories. (The audience know this is happening too, and so the likes of Arsenal and his dealer-beating dead cat are held in contempt not just for how his actions are portrayed, but for what those actions are and mean.) And in most cases, the law in its broadest sense still triumphs most every time, even though the superhero itself rarely suffers the punishment under the law which their actions often justify. (But we've discussed that elsewhere too, so I'll not repeat myself here.)


Yet should the bleakest excesses of authoritarian vigilantism become the norm, and debate about such behaviour simply disappear from the pages of the superhero's tale, the genre will, I believe, undoubtedly simply shrivel and die too. Because the readership will not be being presented with a narrative about how to question while serving the democratic state, but instead be being encouraged in effect to contemptuously overthrow it, and the whole symbolic purpose and power of the superhero tale will have been quite sullied and dissipated.


II. This is not to say, of course, that careless writing and inattentive editing haven't created a host of superhero tales which can be read to support vigilantism in its least pleasant symbolic form. But that unpleasantness isn't a fundamental property of the superhero figure, anymore than all pop music influences listeners to take drugs just because some songs encourage tuning in and dropping out. There is undoubtedly a degree of small-minded vindictiveness as well as ideological ignorance amongst some comic book creators, and their work has sadly produced a great deal of worryingly vile comic books. And yet the majority of superhero books operate just as they always have, placing their superhero leads within the broad framework of the law, arguing not that the system is fundamentally broken so much as it needs to live up to its own ideals.

III. In the last analysis, if the superhero, in all its forms and across all the mediums it appears in, is indeed an evil fascist-inspiring "monomyth", as argued by Lawrence and Jewett, well, it's not a very powerful one, is it? All of the hundreds of millions of Americans who've been exposed to this supposed conceptual carrier of ideological degeneration over the decades and there's still not a single academic study that can link the superhero to any form of fascism, or even simple delinquency, at all. (It's not that I'm saying that we should measure a pernicious text solely in terms of its real-world influence, but rather that there's no perceivable influence to be seen here at all.) And even if the superhero is presumed to be carrying such an anti-democratic contagion, how much more time and energy is going to have to be unknowingly invested into the enterprise before we can see the slightest influence of "pop-fascism" which can be traced back to it? For though I wouldn't deny that there's a worrying development, particularly in America, as regards an apparent decline in respect for the due process of law, it's telling that most of those folks who seem keen to so subvert the rule of law don't seem to come from the superhero-reading, or even watching, classes at all. In fact, the irony must surely be that many of the most fervent proponents of the need for an unconstitutional form of government in America today draw their strength off the myths of a quite different and yet far more popular form of fiction than superhero comic books, namely the Old Testament.

But there's a row for someone else to pick up and run with. Superman versus God. Let's hope that if someone does run with that one, they do a better job with the concept than Star Trek V did.


9. "Henceforth, It Shall Be Your Sacred Duty To Defend The Poor And Helpless..."

To say that showing a "superheroic" character breaking the law creates in the real-world some unmeasurable degree of fascism is to show a profound ignorance of how adventure heroes have been perceived throughout time. The existence of ballads concerning thieving bands of robbers in the woods, or fearsome pirates, or laughing throat-slitting highwaymen, throughout England's past, for example, never meant that the Monarchy itself was under threat of being ideologically or practically undermined. These tales of fearsome outsiders, all far less law-abiding and respectable than the standard-model superhero, were nearly always perceived - as far as we can tell - as being directed not against the system, but against its representatives. (The King was just, but some of his men were cruel, for example, and patently needed replacing.) Similarly, superheroes aren't perceived, I believe, to stand against democracy, or for the right of violent and adolescent-like individuals to impose their will savagely upon others. Or, to put it in comic-book terms, super-hero readers tend to be against Norman Osbourn, but not the concept of the President's right to appoint certain senior public servants, and though they oppose the Sons Of The Serpent, they're not against pressure groups advocating unpopular concepts in a constitutional fashion.


10. "Dad, Wherever You Are ... I Kinda Hope You're Resting Easier Now"

Of course, I can't prove any of the above. It's as much supposition as any theory of "pop-fascism" or "adolescent power fantasies" is, though I hope I've managed to show a few flaws in the basic principles underlying those arguments. For in the last regard, what a superhero is or isn't can't ever be objectively established. We know this. The superhero is whatever somebody says it is, as long as they don't get their first principles scrambled before they come to argue their piece. For me, however, I did just want to make sure that I could gather together a semi-coherent response whenever those "adolescent power fantasies" and that "fascism" was mentioned. After all, a fine protection against being annoyed by ill-considered arguments is to have an argument, ill-thought through or not, of one's own.

But for me, I am convinced, for today at least, that the superhero's meaning can be found in that distance between what we say we believe and what we actually do in today's West. And given that that space between principle and action will always be there, accepting that Heaven-On-Earth is a contradiction for all but the most religious of us, so too then will the superhero, or some such figure, advertising the fact that at least some folks feel that the powers-that-be, right down to you and I, aren't living up to what they promised they'd do.

Which means, thankfully where my taste is concerned, that as long as liberal-democracy lasts, so will the superhero. But, if democracy should fail, and it can on occasion look quite likely these days, to be replaced by a system which doesn't believe in some significant measure of free speech, then the superhero will probably disappear too, or at least be symbolically and therefore functionally emasculated. For no authoritarian state, and especially no fascist one, would countenance stories of anonymous private citizens trying to help the law put the world back into kilter, because no autocracy would accept that private citizens should be even thinking of anything so liberal and inclusive.

Superheroes: another name for what we all know we should be doing if only we weren't so bloody selfish, and human. Not jumping off roofs and flying though the air, because that's the language of symbols, silly. But being true to what we believe where these strange democratic societies that we've been born into are concerned.

Not the worst of us, therefore, these superheroes, but the best, and the most ridiculous too.


11. "We'll Fight Together Or Separately, If Need Be."

When the distance between a symbol and its meaning is too close, the literalism of the whole enterprise discourages the reader from caring. It all becomes too obvious. Place "Democracy Girl" before an audience in this week's new comic books and it had better be a brilliant satire, or an unexpected work of satire-free genius, for why would anyone care for a character that was hardly a character at all? Similarly, "Adolescent-Boy" would be a non-starter, but "Spider-Man" leaves enough space between concept and practise for the reader to not feel patronised.

Yet there is one over-literal, and unsuccessful, superhero that I sentimentally feel belongs here, at the close of this piece, and that's because he of all costumed adventurers sums up the pro-democratic business that we've been discussing. So, regardless of the fact that Terry Sloane, Mr Terrific, was and remains a daft and ineffective character, he carries with him so much of the decency and self-sacrifice associated with the superhero that I can't help but be tremendously fond of him. A man once so purposeless and depressed that he seriously considered suicide, Mr Terrific put aside his private interests in order to find meaning in serving the needs of his fellow citizens. (He was rich, so he could afford to, though it's noticeable that money alone certainly didn't buy him happiness.) And on his costume, in unadorned letters which weren't even contained within a symbol of some kind beyond a yellow blob that might have been meant to be a bell, were the two words which for me best summon up what the business of the superhero is. No, not "pop-fascism", of course.

But "Fair Play".


Next time:- "Daddy Deadshot", promised but not delivered due to my losing a graphic novel. So, at the cost of £15, including post and packing, there'll be a look at Deadshot's career over a few TPBs, and after that, perhaps something on Alex Harvey's "Vambo", the greatest Scottish superhero of all time! My sincere thanks to all who've made it down to my sincere thanks here! A splendid day is wished for all of you.

.

Number 781


Backwoods gal makes good!


This story, from St. John's Cinderella Love #13, 1953, feeds into a stereotype of country folks, if you see it as something of Li'l Abner, only done more seriously. Betty Lou lives with her lazy pappy and hard-working mammy in Arkansas, where she has to walk 30 miles to a hog-callin' contest. Betty Lou is accosted by Hurd Maxwell, a hillbilly her pappy is having a feud with. Hurd has rape on his mind, but he's interrupted by the movie feller from Hollywood. That's where this unlikely story veers from stereotype into outright fantasy, and the story ends with Betty Lou a movie star. (I don't write these things...I just post them.)

Maybe Hurd Maxwell had been reading some of these paperback books of the era, where backwoods girls are mighty sexy, and mighty easy.



John Benson's excellent book on St. John's love comics, Romance Without Tears, is still available from Amazon.com. "My Prince Charming" is not included in Benson's book.








Starting this Sunday, August 1, a special theme month for Pappy's. Each week will feature a genre of comics. First up, "Science Fiction Week," followed by "Crime Does Pay" week, "Un-super Superheroes" week, and finally, "Comical Comics" week. I had a great time finding stories to fit into the themes and I believe you'll enjoy them.

1. "Truth, Justice & The American Way"

Superheroes, we are constantly told, are an adolescent power fantasy. A rather sweeping generalisation, you might think, about both adolescents and, yes, superheroes, but it must be true. And it must be true because it's a point that's constantly being stated and restated without ever seeming to be questioned. And for a common-sense truth which appears to have become accepted as fact simply through a process of repetition across the decades, it has a cardinal's college of highly esteemed, and rightly so, comic book professionals propagating it as gospel. Mark Waid, for example, in his essay "The Real Truth About Superman", wrote that;

"Comic book superheroes were created as, and always have been at root, an adolescent power fantasy."

And so, it seems that everybody knows that this business about the adolescent power fantasy and superheroes is undoubtedly true, and they know because, well, everybody knows, don't they?


2. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

I. There's another "truth" about superheroes which is less generally held, but still commonly expressed as fact and even more commonly debated as a possibility, namely the inherent fascism of the very idea of the superhero. Here the sources are incredibly unlikely to include too many mainstream comic book creators, given how loathsome that word "fascism" is, but they are often well-respected cultural commentators all the same, despite their strange choice to follow in the footsteps of the still ludicrous Fredric Wertham. How the proud and crusading Dr Wertham of 1954, who claimed that Superman was a fundamentally fascist and racist character whose adventures cruelly deceived children about the laws of physics, would have likely approved of Lawrence and Jewett's "Myth Of The American Superhero", and their "Captain America And The Crusade Against Evil" too. In the latter, for example, we're told that;

"In the modern superhero story ... Helpless communities are redeemed by lone savior figures who are never integrated into them and never marry at the story's end. In effect, like the god's they are permanent outsiders to the human community ... We suggest this new myth system .... shows a democratic face in that the protagonist is an everyman, yet has a pop-fascist dimension in that these unelected, law-transcending figures exercise superpowers to overcome their foes ... The stories stories show that, when confronted with genuine evil, democratic institutions and the due process of law always fail ... This embodies the vigilante tradition, in which redeemer figures who often wear the white robes of the book of revelation rid the community of its ostensible enemies."


Quite frankly, if these men are to believed, there's more than a little something rotten at the heart of the concept of the superhero. The very notion of the superhero, Lawrence and Jewett are telling us, is "pop-fascist", and that's about as low a judgement of a storytelling tradition as one can get. Indeed, they might just as well have defined the superhero as "evil" and saved themselves a great deal of terminology. Yet, in not doing sparing the polysyllables, their thesis won the John Cawelti Award of the American Culture Association Best Book Award of 2002, and the Mythopoeic Society Scholarship Award In Myth And Fantasy Studies 2004.

This isn't simply the chuntering of internet posters grumbling away to each other, as you and I are doing here. This is material that is being treated seriously. The "pop-fascism" of the superhero, whether in comic books or in any other field of American entertainment, is apparently a profoundly serious problem.


3. "I Shall Become A Bat"

I. The term "pop-fascism", as used by Lawrence and Jewett, seems to be being used to describe the specific media product that is superheroes in order to highlight how the adventures of the likes of Superman, Aquaman and Spider-Man encourage the view that;
  • America should rule the world,because only American superheroes can save it
  • powerful American superheroes can achieve transcendentally more than even the apparently corrupt and incompetent American Government can
  • a selfless superhero-like leader should take control of America, and presumably the world, and rule in a pure and effective way which no democratically elected individual could
Now, I've written on this blog before about my concern that the American superhero is often positioned in opposition to the American state, especially where Captain America is concerned (*1), but that doesn't mean that the superhero is by its very nature a "pop-fascist" figure. There doesn't exist a storytelling form which can't be subverted by intent or incompetence to carry a "pop-fascist" meaning, if that must be the term we're supposed to be using here. ("Fascism" always seemed to be a perfectly applicable phrase to me before, but all those awards do confirm a certain weight to a term, don't they?) In fact, rather than conceding that the superhero is implicitly fascist, I'd like to suggest exactly the opposite, for it seems obvious to me that the superhero narrative is a profoundly democratic form which draws its power from the myths and values of Western liberal democracy, and that only in a specific set of carelessly-constructed circumstances can the superhero seem to be any other such thing, let alone an avatar of "pop fascism".

(*1) The three Captain America pieces which can be accessed from the "labels" menu to the right are concerned with that matter. Since I dealt with some of the circumstances in which a superhero comic might contribute to an anti-democratic ethos there, I'll not cover the same ground again here. Folks who may have already some of those pieces deserve not to have re-live the experience again!


4. "We Gotta Use That Power To Help Mankind, Right?"

At the heart of these claims that the superhero is an "adolescent power fantasy", or indeed a component of a fascist-inspiring ideology, lie, I believe, two major and closely related misunderstandings of what the superhero is and why it has appealed in a variety of mass mediums to such huge audiences for such a long period of time;
  • Firstly, it's often assumed that an enjoyment of the adventures of a costumed "superhero" is, in some vague and ill-defined way, dependent on the reader being able to engage with a sense of fury and impotence unique to a teenager coming to terms with their place in society, and;
  • Secondly, there is a working assumption that this taken-for-granted sense of fury and impotence both reflects and intensifies the superhero-loving reader's desire to impose their will upon the world in a profoundly violent, and possibly anti-democratic fashion.
But I can't help but believe that these premises are, as I hope I might show, quite flawed and, in truth, utterly unconvincing. Instead, I'm convinced that there's an at-least equally compelling case for arguing that the superhero is rather a symbol of;
  • the awareness of how the ideals of American democratic society and that societies management are to a greater or lesser degree out-of-sync, a sense of how the institutions and individuals of American society aren't always living up to the principles they profess to hold to, and;
  • a deeply conservative desire for the liberal-democratic ideals of the West to be followed in fact as well as principle by American society.

Or to put it another way, readers of all ages enjoy these tales of superheroes because we're aware on one level or another that there is a problem in our societies where the distribution of power is concerned. We love to watch those who violate and/or betray liberal-democratic values being dealt with, but not because we believe that a fascist state would be better than a democratic one. In fact, the superhero is a figure who serves to return, in narrative form, democracy to its ideals, where everyone is society is protected from the power wielded by those who care not a whit for fairness at all. For brought up as many of us in the West, and particularly in America, have been, quite consistently marinated in the popular tenants of democracy, we long to live in a world where the reality of our civil society and the claims made for it coincide more closely. And the superhero, rather than being a symbol of how the audience should turn to authoritarian government, draws its power from our knowledge of how democracy often doesn't work while desperately wishing that it did.

Therefore, the superhero is in its meaning a profoundly anti-fascist symbol. And the appeal of the cape'n'spandax crew is one which would stand for all age-groups rather than merely that of confused pubescents, because most if not nearly all of us long for a state which is in practise what it claims to be in principle: fair and just. That's not a property of youth, it's an unavoidable consequence of living in a democratic society. And it isn't anything to do with fascism, for it's concerned with an active freedom from fear and persecution rather than a capitulation to autocracy.


5. "I Think You're Marvellous - I Know You'll Help Me"

On reflection, it's astonishing that the superhero as "adolescent power fantasy" myth has survived for as long as it has, because it's patently an unsustainable argument. In the long decades of their existence, superheroes have appealed to an incredibly broad range of age groups, with the Dark Knight movies alone winning over tens of millions of adult viewers. If the superheroes existence in the form of radio shows, TV series, movies, books, stage plays and of course comic books is considered, then it must be obvious that there's a great deal more folks who aren't adolescent who've enjoy watching be-costumed characters righting wrongs than those who are. Unless all these folks are re-defined as having some "adolescent" qualities which make them susceptible to enjoying superhero adventures, and that would be a patently unfalsifiable proposition, then the fact must be accepted that being an adolescent is in no way an irreducible component of enjoying the adventures of Superman and his brethren. Anyway, to label so many millions of people over more than seven decades as being in some ill-defined way all "adolescent" is to make the term so broad that it's meaningless: if "adolescence" somehow extends across so many age-groups, then it would appear that it can't be "adolescence" at all that we're considering. Rather, it must be a common human quality that makes the superhero, under the right circumstances, so enjoyable and moving.

II. Even if we narrow our focus to the first wave of comic books themselves, as Mark Waid did in the above quote when he argued that superheroes were by designed targeted at adolescents, the argument is hard to support. For the initial audiences for superheroes were far broader than simply adolescents, and that mass market has often been described as including a huge percentage of children far below the threshold of pubescence. (Is this "adolescent" quality one which moves prepubescents too? Would that be a "premature-adolescent" quality then?) Similarly, we know that the War years saw substantial numbers of adults, particularly servicemen, consuming superhero tales, so, again, unless we choose to label all these groups as somehow adolescent, the term collapses in its applicability.

III. Was Christopher Reeve's "Superman" so loved because of the impotence and rage he symbolised, or the Adam West "Batman"? Or was it some other property common to adolescents which also seems to affect children and adults that, for example, permitted George Reeve and Tobey Maguire to become so popular and well-loved in costume? Is it childishness or naivety we're talking about? Immaturity or a festering desire to see other people sorted out before our eyes?

What is that this "adolescence" actually describes?


IV: Might I suggest that we agree to consign this "adolescence" business to the conceptual bottom-drawer and look elsewhere for the superheroes appeal? For I can't conceive of how it's become seen as "childish" to be able to engage in stories where the world is, while fundamentally often a hospitable place, regularly characterised by conflict and unfairness. Don't most of us feel ourselves to be often at the mercy of individuals and groups far beyond our, or apparently anybody's, control? Indeed, isn't that everyone's experience of life, adult or otherwise, who isn't blinded by ideology, a great accumulation of wealth or an enviable over-measure of optimism? It isn't adolescent or immature to be aware that even our revered democratic societies are full of predators and ignoramuses, and that it's sometimes hard to anticipate correctly which breed will get us first. Whether we're a child being bullied and finding that help is hard to come by, or grown citizens faced with exploitative prices in the shops and anti-social behaviour outside our neighbourhood stores, the sense that society isn't fair and won't respond to our needs is often an objective and valid one.

That's not a belief that's fascist, of course. It's not a rejection of democracy, so much as a wish that democracy would function more effectively.

And it's a belief that's intensified by the myths of democracy which we're fed as children and to which we're still exposed as we age. While a degree of unfairness, of even callousness, is to be expected by the members of some other political societies, now and throughout history, democracy sells itself on the holy writ of, yes, liberty, fraternity and equality. Democracy is a system where truths are self-evident, where the little person can rise to be president one day, and where everybody can have their say and live their lives their own way too. Except, of course, that for most of the time for most of the people, it's no such thing. No human society can ever be so benevolent and so excellently efficient for even most of its existence. No, as we all well know, democracy is a system founded on impossible ideals which yet works on the whole incredibly well, given the crippling limits of human nature. And although many of us are fortunate enough to have become familiar with the view that democracy is not so much about achieving our dreams as making sure that other individuals can't dominate government to achieve theirs, the popular understanding of it is often a quite Disney-fied one, a sentimental conception of shining cities on hills and lands fit for heroes and little people. In fact, regardless of how aware we are of the doctrine of the separation of powers and the primacy of the rule of law, that political sentimentality can strike down any of us at any time. How can this happen here, we ask ourselves, for this is America, Britain, or wherever? And we expect more because we seem to have been promised it, and we're disappointed because Bush and Blair seemed to be mendacious idiots, and Cameron and Obama appear to be no knights in shining armour. And it's tough at times, regardless of how sophisticated and cynical we regard ourselves to be, to haul ourselves back, put our sulking emotions securely into the box, and to remind ourselves that, as Churchill enjoyed repeating, Democracy is the least worst of all political systems, and that's its virtue.

It's not heaven on earth. It was never intended to be. We know that.


But democracy is an emotional as well as a philosophical concept. We expect a great deal of the various powers that be, whether they're within the state or subject to it. And, quite frankly, they're often not doing what our hearts expect of them. They're hypocrites and carpet-baggers, they're this and they're that, but we loose faith far more in them than we do in the system itself.
Suggest that all politicians should be nailed to a raft that's to be floated off to sea and there'd be some agreement that it's a good plan. But recommending that that purging should be followed up by the scraping of democracy would inspire a great deal less nodding and chuckling. For the West still seems to believe that on the whole the representative system is essentially a good thing, which could surely be made to work better if only we'd all live up to our common ideals.

Hence, the superhero, no more the enemy of democracy than the romance comic is the enemy of romance. Simply to say that democracy isn't sorting out many of its most pressing problems, as the superhero symbolically implies, isn't to demand that democracy be done away with, anymore than the existence of a tearful problem getting dates on Friday night implies that the whole business of love and romance should be shelved in favour of, for example, serial killing.


V. All of those who tell us that part of the process of leaving behind adolescence is learning to accept the world as it is, to "grow up", somehow manage to miss the fact that a "grown up" could only miss the inequalities in power and opportunity in the modern West through a conscious act of conceptual-repression. And so, to perceive our democracies to be grossly unfair systems, to be riddled with incompetence and crime and powerful special interests, isn't to be adolescent. It's to be the very thing which superhero fans are so often accused of not being, an adult, seeing the world for what it is. Nor is it fascist to want those grand ideals which underlie democracy to be referenced more often and more ably. In many ways, it's a desire that stands in direct contradiction to the values of fascism. The belief that the democratic system could be restored to working democratic order if only more of us were willing to put their shoulders to the wheel at great cost to themselves, and to great advantage for the people, surely occupies an antagonistic place on the political spectrum to the abandonment of responsibility demanded of by a Hitler or Mussolini?

For the superhero hardly ever wants to change society on a fundamental level, or overthrow it, as we'll soon discuss. The superhero just wants Wall Street to play fair, criminals to obey the law, citizens to be honest and understanding in their everyday business, and, overall, those truths which are self-evident to be commonly accepted and practised and, yes, evident.

Once we're all playing fair and by the rules, the superhero disappears. He or she shows us that there is an alternative to accepting the unfair and hypocritical aspects of contemporary life. Because the superhero is at heart, as it was in 1938 when Superman first appeared, a dramatic and colourful symbol for a more honest and meaningful way of living. And by pulling on those garish and absurd costumes, the superheroes declare by the fact of their very superheroic existence that social virtue is so worthwhile that it deserves human symbols who act anonymously and without reward, and then, job done, disappear.

VI. And it's there that the appeal of the superhero rests, drawing off our democratic sentimentality, our desire for a human society which treats itself well. The superhero is a ridiculous, heartfelt, colourful, two-dimensional shout that says that it's tougher out here in real life than we were promised, that it's dangerous and often inequitable too, and that there are times when it would be good to have a friend who'd help to even the balance between the individual and the powers-that-be. In that sense, the superhero is a worthwhile and understandable symbol to the reader of how the powers-that-be aren't always quite what they promised they would be. But in the language of symbols, that doesn't mean that the superhero by its existence suggests that democracy should be replaced by fascism, because its a love of democracy that motivates our disappointment and the superheroes existence in the first place.

And I think that the link between the superhero and democratic sentiment is so powerful, so fundamental, that it explains why superheroes who gain political power in their stories never appeal to a wider audience. For strangely, in a so-considered "pop-fascist" form, there are no superheroes shown taking over societies and governing well who retain any popular following substantial enough to float their own book. Thor stagnates and loses his popular appeal the more his adventures focus solely on Odin's son as a King of Asgard. The form just won't permit that to be acceptable, and so audiences diminish, and Thor is banished, or in rebellion, or unpopular with the gods for not wearing the right helmet, or whatever, because the underlying truth of the superhero is that the hero enables democracy, not replaces it.

And what could be a more effective example of this than Aquaman, a character who has been popular throughout the decades in a variety of mediums, who is time and time again almost a commercially succesful superhero, and yet who constantly flails around looking for an audience? Though undoubtedly flummoxed as a commercial proposition by a variety of problems, which of course we've discussed here at length, could it be that one of his recurrent narratives, namely that of ruling Atlantis or having to cope with not ruling it, alienates an audience that simply can't accept the story-logic of a superhero as a king in the first place? For the first demand that a superheroes audience instinctively makes of a King is that he frees his people? The crown and the costume are simply incompatible. (*2) And so for Namor, and Geo-Force, and Ka-Zar, and just about every other comic-book king that can be thought of, symbol and rank collide and the audience dribbles away.

The superhero, with perhaps the single exception of The Black Panther, which we'll discuss in a piece that's nearly ready for an appearance on this blog, is a figure which overthrows tyrannies and establishes democracies. That's the only kind of social revolution which the costumed supermen and women ever engage in, founded as they are in the belief that the default setting for human political organisation is representative democracy. (*3) And of course that would be so, for the superhero is, after all, fundamentally an American way of seeing the world, and most Americans want neither Kings or fascists giving speeches while wrapped in their flag beside the Washington Monument. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

*2 Very long-term readers will notice that I appear to have switched sides on the "should-Aquaman-be-a-king"debate, but I stand by my original wish to have him as a constitutional monarch come warlord, which is compatible with democracy, as we Brits seem to have discovered.
*3 Removing a dictatorship and replacing it with the ballot-box isn't a "revolution" to the Justice League or The Avengers; it's a kind and necessary reversion to humanity's natural state, and yes, that will be a point we'll be raising later on.

To be concluded tomorrow:


Part 2 will indeed conclude matters tomorrow, where I'll try to close this argument that the superman is counter-intuitively a profoundly democratic creation. At least I haven't picked the easy argument here. It would be splendid to see you there, perhaps, just as it is splendid to think of your day going, er, splendidly. To all who've reached this exit line, thank you!

.
A couple weeks ago, DC Comics's Source blog made their official upcoming Spring 2011 Collected Editions announcement. A number of these hardcover and paperback early 2011 trade paperback solicitations we've already discussed (and you can also follow the comics solicitations channel), but I want to look again at some highlights now that we have a list of the contents.

Hardcovers to paperback
One of the most controversial items that I saw on the list was DC changing the format of the new Justice League International collections from hardcover to paperback; after four hardcover releases, the fifth volume seems to be paperback only.

This is not necessarily unheard of -- Gail Simone's Wonder Woman collections started in hardcover and then went to paperback, as did the Booster Gold series after Geoff Johns left. Green Lantern Corps jumped from paperback to hardcover before Blackest Night, much to my chagrin.

What's causing the most consternation, I think, is that the thick Justice League International books better resembled high-end omnibus volumes like the Starman volumes than "regular" series collections. Maybe DC would argue that the sales weren't there for a fifth Justice League International hardcover, but I do believe the readers who began collecting JLI had a reasonable expectation that they were buying a hardcover "set," how ever many volumes, and now that seems not the case.

The other possibility is that since this is a Justice League Europe-centered collection, maybe JLE will be collected in paperback (not as JLI Vol. 5, then) and JLI will continue to be collected in hardcover.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL VOL. 5 TP
Writers: Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis
Artists: Bill Willingham, Joe Rubinstein, Bart Sears, Pablo Marcos, Mike McKone, Tim Gula and others
Collects: JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL ANNUAL #2-3 and JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE #1-6
$19.99 US, 240 pages

Meanwhile, after nine hardcover collections, Superman/Batman is about to switch to first-run paperback with Worship. Again, this is slightly more understandable for monthly series, though I'd rather DC stayed consistent. Worship completely skips the much maligned Joe Casey issues that were supposed to, but didn't really, tie in to Our Worlds at War, and picks up with the Paul Levitz stories.

SUPERMAN/BATMAN: WORSHIP TP
Writer: Paul Levitz
Artists: Renato Guedes, José Wilson Magalhães and Jerry Ordway
Collects: SUPERMAN/BATMAN #72-75 and SUPERMAN/BATMAN ANNUAL #4
$17.99 US, 160 pages

Whether all of this suggests a DC Comics hardcover implosion (the Brightest Day solicitation below notwithstanding) is something to consider.

Bi-monthly? Semi-monthly? Expensive!
The other bit of controversy on the list is not just that the twenty-six issue Brightest Day will be released in hardcover (see the results of our Brightest Day poll), but that the hardcover will only collect eight issues. Now, no doubt some of these issues are extra-sized, but it does suggest we're looking at three volumes for collecting Brightest Day, when DC's collected its weekly fifty-two-issue series in four paperback volumes; I think many expected Brightest Day to be collected in just two books.

BRIGHTEST DAY VOL. 1 HC
Writers: Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi
Artists: Ivan Reis, Patrick Gleason, Ardian Syaf, Scott Clark and Joe Prado
Collects: BRIGHTEST DAY #0-7
$29.99 US, 256 pages

In addition, Justice League: Generation Lost will also be first-run hardcover, but that initial volume collects twelve issues, suggesting Generation Lost will only be two volumes. This makes it seem all the more lopsided -- dare I say, a little financially motivated -- for DC to put Brightest Day in three volumes.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST VOL. 1 HC
Writers: Keith Giffen and Judd Winick
Artists: Fernando Dagnino, Aaron Lopresti and Joe Bennett
Collects: JUSTICE LEAGUE: GENERATION LOST #1-12
$39.99 US, 320 pages

Stop me if you've heard this one before ...
Possibly the single weirdest item on the new list is the deluxe Batman: Hush Unwrapped. We at Collected Editions theorized this was another printing of Hush this time deluxe-sized; what we didn't get was that it's going to be pencils only. Now, Jim Lee draws a very pretty picture, but this seems a remarkably esoteric product, the kind of thing mainly meant for aspiring artists. Jeph Loeb is listed as the writer, of course, but will this have word balloons, I wonder, or just the pencils?

BATMAN: HUSH UNWRAPPED DELUXE EDITION HC
Writer: Jeph Loeb
Artist: Jim Lee
Collects: BATMAN #608-619 in pencil form
$39.99 US, 320 pages

Another item that'll seem familiar to solicitation-watchers is the Suicide Squad collection, which has gone through a number of Showcase Presents and other iterations before finally (hopefully), we see a collection of the first eight issues. This volume stops just before the Suicide Squad/Doom Patrol crossover, which maybe we'll see in another volume.

SUICIDE SQUAD: TRIAL BY FIRE TP
Writer: John Ostrander
Artists: Luke McDonnell, Dave Hunt, Bob Lewis and Karl Kesel
Collects: SUICIDE SQUAD #1-8 and SECRET ORIGINS #14
$19.99 US, 232 pages

Various and assorted
As excited as I am for the collected volume of Greg Rucka's new Question stories, I note this collection stops a couple issues from the end of Rucka's Question run. Maybe we'll see those final stories and the final Batwoman tale, "Cutter," all collected together?

THE QUESTION: PIPELINE TP
Writer: Greg Rucka
Artists: Cully Hamner
Collects: Stories from DETECTIVE COMICS #854-863
$14.99 US, 128 pages

Here's the last Gotham Central omnibus release, including the uncollected issue #32. Related in some way to the Justice League International controversy, we also see the start of DC releasing the Gotham Central omnibuses in paperback; whereas I might not have thought these books were viable in paper, DC seems to think otherwise, and I wonder if Starman and others are coming behind.

GOTHAM CENTRAL BOOK FOUR: CORRIGAN HC
Writers: Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker
Artists: Steve Leiber, Kano and Stefano Gaudiano
Collects: GOTHAM CENTRAL #32-40
$29.99 US, 224 pages

GOTHAM CENTRAL BOOK ONE: IN THE LINE OF DUTY TP
Writers: Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker
Artist: Michael Lark
Collects: GOTHAM CENTRAL #1-10
$19.99 US, 240 pages

The next Grant Morrison Batman collection after The Return of Bruce Wayne had been called Era of the Batman and Time and the Batman (which I enjoyed for its unusual phrasing); it's now apparently settled at Batman: Time of the Batman.

BATMAN: TIME OF THE BATMAN HC
Writer: Grant Morrison
Artists: David Finch, Tony Daniel, Andy Kubert and Frank Quitely
Collects: BATMAN #700-703
$19.99 US, 128 pages

Apparently DC has run dry of the rich tapestry of Starman tie-in material out there; this one goes straight from Grand Guignol to Sons of the Father with no interruptions -- except, you'll notice, it seems DC will indeed include the final Blackest Night issue, too.

THE STARMAN OMNIBUS VOL. 6 HC
Writer: James Robinson
Artists: Peter Snejbjerg, Russ Heath, Paul Smith, Fernando Dagnino and Bill Sienkiewicz
Collects: STARMAN #61-81
$49.99 US, 544 pages

The fifth Showcase Presents: Green Lantern volume collects the famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow "Hard-Traveling Heroes" storyline, and I'm surprised DC doesn't have that right in the title.

There's also an upcoming Green Lantern Omnibus that collects the very early 1960s Green Lantern issues. I wonder if that's for fans of the new movie, though I imagine the older stories won't be quite to casual comics fans' tastes; this is the first time we've seen an omnibus of such older material that's not an Archives collection, and I wonder if DC is testing the waters with this format toward more of the same.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: GREEN LANTERN VOL. 5 TP
Writers: Dennis O’Neil and Elliot S. Maggin
Artists: Neal Adams, Frank Giacioa, Dan Adkins, Dick Giordano, Mike Peppe, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Grell, Bob Smith, Terry Austin, Vince Colletta and Alex Saviuk
Collects: GREEN LANTERN #76-100
$19.99 US, 544 pages

So, what were your favorites from DC's list? What do you have to have, and what will you leave on the shelf? Sound off and jump in!