20.06.2007
From mighty messiahs to mere mortals
Superheroes like Batman and Spiderman mean lucrative movies and reviews in The Times and The Guardian. Yet the very first superhero, Superman, was invented by two working class teenagers during the depression. Mike Belbin looks at the development of the genre and what it may tell us about its makers and audiences
Heroes, of course, predate comicbooks: Hercules and Robin Hood also did great deeds and assisted the weak. Superheroes, however, are a 20th century genre, through small modifications growing from simple beginnings and a juvenile audience, albeit with a wide readership. The genre developed a profitable mythology and in recent years the comicbook hero has exhibited a self-consciousness about conventions and assumptions, while reaching a knowing and critical public.
Comic books can be traced back to the cartoon stories, told in panelled sequence, published by newspapers at the end of the 19th century. Then in 1933 someone had the bright idea of bringing together a number of these strips between magazine-like covers and selling them separately. Their comic or adventurous characters caught on with an audience of all ages wishing to escape from the depression.
One source for the introduction of superheroes into this medium was radio: in the early 30s masked heroes like the Lone Ranger, Zorro and the Shadow prowled the airwaves, searching out evil forces to defeat. These masked men were often rich and used scientific gadgets benevolently to avenge the victims of crime. Then in 1938 two Cleveland teenagers, Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster, invented the first superhero, a combination of lone avenger and sci-fi alien, Superman, who, being from a planet with two suns, acquired an intensification of human powers when on Earth. He too was not an official of the law, but another lone hero tackling criminals and assisting the weak.
In fact, in the very first issue the Superman sped around taking on wife-beaters and corrupt senators, as well as bank robbers.1 This was in the American tradition of the private citizen deputising for the state, but with a difference. Because of his superlative abilities, the Man of Steel did not have to be a millionaire. His other identity was that of a simple working reporter, Clark Kent, who put himself across as mild-mannered and definitely not superlative. This Superman was no Nazi blond Aryan, but comparable to the biblical figure of the messiah (Judaic or christian) - a figure who was mortal, but divinely gifted ready to handle the lawbreakers among us.
To the young men who made up the first comic readers he was a saintly enforcer without a badge, combining the thrill of independence with an aura of authority - capable and responsible without being someone's underling.
DC, the company that owned Superman, had a sales success on its hands and, as usual in the culture industry, success provoked copies. Most were not direct imitations, of course. Fear of infringing DC's copyright tended to make for non-alien mortal characters who started as ordinary people, but were transformed by proximity to some magical source or by a chemical accident. Later an encounter with something radioactive could make you super, rather than sick. There was even Captain America (created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby - both working class Jews), who, though not super in the flying and heat-vision sense, was superbly athletic: the product of a laboratory experiment to make fitter soldiers.
World's finest
Superheroes were created in the USA of president Roosevelt. This was the America, and more particularly the government, that believed in improvement by technology and state intervention to assist ailing depression capitalism. Massive dams were built to increase the supply of electricity and the FBI used science, forensic and computerised, to combat crime and conduct surveillance. The comicbook heroes were also scientific - products of experiment like Captain America, or with abilities suggestive of the use of elemental physical forces. Batman had his cars, helicopters and utility belt, and was also an echo of the millionaire detectives of the radio and the whodunits like Sherlock Holmes or Rex Stout.
Hero comics sold well to mostly males of all ages, whether in the armed forces or at school. Of course, Hitler then gave everybody, including comicbook heroes, their biggest villain of all to take on.
The new superheroes were proof that the US way of life - technocratic, individualist and athletic - was a match for any threat. Mild-mannered guys, and even female heroes like Wonder Woman, could take on dire threats from the powerful of the world, even if these only came in the form of ugly foreigners or megalomaniac crooks.
After the Pacific war ended in 1945, following the use of a super weapon on Nagasaki, superhero comics became identified with the war and declined in popularity. They gave way to other genres like romance, horror and regular crime stories. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman and Captain America were, though, still alive and well in the new 'superpower' war in Korea.
Marvels
In the mid-50s, there was a scandal about comic books. Whether or not it was related to the McCarthyite concerns about internal subversion has been debated. For example, the worst thing anti-comics campaigner Fredric Wertham could say about Batman and his sidekick Robin was they must be a gay couple.2 But in the 50s, this was tantamount to undermining the American Way of Life. The upshot in 1954 was a Comics code, where publishers agreed to voluntary self-censorship and publish picture stories aimed strictly at children. One of the prime targets of the anti-comics campaign, Will Gaines, whose father had collected together the first strips, began publishing the adult satirical magazine Mad.
There had hardly been any direct politics in the mainly horror comics that now vanished, but the need for policing was still felt. The comics produced after the introduction of the code were anodyne - Batman for one became podgy and jokey. A popular art was reined in: only contemptibly unexciting superheroes were deemed suitable for children. Stories could still deal with issues like facing your fears and the problems of asexual super-friendships, but in comfortable, easily solvable ways. There was even a Superboy strip about the Lad of Steel defending some youngsters from prejudice and discrimination by their schoolmates - the minority group involved being second-generation Swedes.
Then came, if not a revolution, a new turn.
The Marvel age of comics began in 1961 when the publishers of the Timely company decided they needed something to compete with DC's Superman and Batman. Up to then Timely had mostly published monster and science fiction comics. Aliens from outer space or different time dimensions - these colourful, often dragon-like creatures - were acceptable as 'horror' for children.
In 1956, however, DC had started a new line in superhero comics, updating heroes from the 40s - the golden age, as comic fans call it. The first such attempt was with the Flash, a super-fast crime fighter who got a new costume and a more respectable job as a police chemist. DC also brought out a team book, the Justice League, featuring Batman, Superman and a whole squad of superheroes. This sold well too - the drama of teamwork, individual talents helping each other, having been a fascination at least since the Merrie Men of Sherwood.
Over a golf game, a DC editor boasted how well it was doing to Timely publisher Martin Goodman. Goodman got on to his editor and cousin, Stanley Lieber - or, as he had renamed himself, Stan Lee. Goodman told Lee to come up with a superteam book for Timely. Lee wrote a treatment for an idea about three men and a woman who rocket to the moon and receive a burst of gamma waves. He gave the art job to Jack Kirby of Captain America fame. So was born the Fantastic Four, a quartet of people with extra-special abilities, but with human foibles. For one, they did not get on with each other.
The gamma rays turned Ben Grimm into a craggy orange Thing, not unlike the 'monsters' in the comics usually produced by Timely, but unlike them he was bitter about his looks and jealous of the others. Hot-headedness, disgruntlement, even violence flared between the characters. This new approach proved a hit. Lee and his artists, Kirby and Steve Ditko, came up with more ideas in the same problem-loaded style and from 1963 Timely was proudly retitled Marvel.
Superheroes have always had a human side - eg, Clark Kent - but Lee, Ditko and Jack Kirby humanised the superhero to an even greater extent, giving them not only an alternative identity, but whole human lives: problems with work, confidence, bossy superiors and far from simple love lives.
The prime example was Spiderman. Drawn by Ditko, 'Spidey's alter-ego was not a millionaire philanthropist like Batman, but a teenager who had to earn money by freelance photojournalism. His boss, Daily Bugle editor J Jonah Jameson, was one of the glories of the strip. Though no super-villain, he was crabby, bossy and opportunist enough to remind readers along the way that even super-beings lived in a world run by other kinds of power. Jameson was a media capitalist, but comedy enough not to need destroying because he was so easily seen through, sometimes revealing a heart of gold. He was also outwitted not only by Spiderman, but by his contract employee, Peter Parker. It was all drawn in Ditko's lively colourful, but kitchen sink - or tenement rooftop - style.
Marvel's action-cum-soaps had by the late 60s made their comics the top sellers and their competitors, DC, were trying to do complexity and relevance too. DC began to deal with racism (Green Lantern), death (Deadman) and native Americans (Firehair). The principal villains were often slum landlords, while the tone was preachy rather than analytical or dramatic, but life beyond the colour-print pages was no longer being ignored. Even if Green Lantern never got to prevent a cop or FBI agent shooting a ghetto activist.
More lasting in resonance than the topical comics was work produced by Jack Kirby, who in the 40s, along with Joe Simon, had created Captain America. At Marvel in the 60s, Kirby, with inspiration and dialogue from Stan Lee, practically created everything except Spiderman. Kirby's style has been described as "iconic forms with a sense of the real about them, bolstered by a powerful design sense".3
It could be direct and visually interesting at the same time - a blend of graphics and narrative drive, always to the point. Another feature of the strip format he began to develop was the continuing story over several issues of the same book, rather than a discrete piece in each issue.
In the mid-60s, the mythological Thor the Thunder God was pitted in a contest with his evil brother, Loki, arranged by their father, Odin. Loki cheated and used some magic stones to gain advantage. These got lost in Vietnam, then, of course, engulfed in war. A local village 'witchdoctor' found them and became transformed into a potentate called the Demon. This plot went on for several issues, feeding into an even more soap-like story about Thor's love for a mortal woman and his father's displeasure. The serial form was a sure-fire way to keep readers buying, but, in Kirby's hands, it reached out towards the expanse of an epic.
The even more epic story that Kirby then came up with was the Galactus trilogy (which introduced our recent movie star, the Silver Surfer). Stan Lee, so the legend goes, had suggested to his most brilliant artists that the Fantastic Four should "fight god". Galactus was an intergalactic giant that came to Earth to drain it of all energy; the Surfer was his herald and lieutenant. It seemed that only the Fantastic Four were available to stop him.
Galactus could be said to be too vague to represent any particular social force. He was not exactly Exxon, Ford or the Pentagon. He was Power; indeed, he was Exploitation, draining resources from humanity for his own aggrandisement. For three issues, the FF were at a loss as to how to defeat him. The high point of the story, though, came when a non-super character intervened on the eve of destruction. Sketched out by Kirby but, according to Ronin Ro,4 suggested by Stan Lee, the Silver Surfer visits Alicia Masters, blind girlfriend of the Thing, and she convinces him not to assist in destroying the Earth. "Perhaps," she pleads, "we're not as powerful as your Galactus, but we have hearts "¦ we have souls "¦ we live "¦ Can't you see that?" (FF No49, April 1966). The Surfer considers this and a bit more besides, and then goes out to challenge his cosmic master. The scene is set for a final struggle that leads to Galactus giving up his plans as a bad job. A convincing human argument was shown to be a power in itself.
Kirby had helped create some of the greatest moments in the history of the genre, but he was underpaid and felt under-appreciated. In 1970 DC made an offer and he took it. He was going to be allowed not only to create new characters, but also to produce four new books, each focusing on a different bunch of heroes, but linked in one overall epic: the Fourth World. It was no longer Earth - ie, New York - that was in danger, but the whole universe.
The epic featured Kirby's most fascinating antagonist yet, Darkseid. He looked like a thug, someone's robot heavy, but he thought in subtle and unhysterical ways. His name may have written partly as German, but he was least like a comicbook Hitler of any of the super-villains. He did not simply want to rule the world or even drain it of energy, but to control life. He was inherently confident, not psychotic from an accident. As the member of an aristocratic family holding sway in a world called Apokolips, he was familiar with giving commands. He appreciated opportunities and could delegate to formidable servants.
Darkseid was not 'driven'. Acquiring the cosmic principle of Life was more like a business plan than an obsession. And against this multi-symbolic character, Kirby posed a bundle of peace-seekers, oddballs and tormented fighters that suggested nothing less than an abstraction of the 1960s 'alternative culture'. Kirby's Fourth World not only drew on the mythology of comicbooks, but as a story, like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, reached the level of myth.
However, sales did not reach the expected high levels and after two years DC cancelled the books. Later they refused to return the original artwork to Kirby, which he could have sold to keep the superwolf from the door. Whereupon the whole comics community, artists and fans, rose up and campaigned against this insult.
Kirby was the epitome of the work-for-hire artist who had transcended creatively, if not economically, the position of hack. The genre after Superman had replicated the idea of the superior individual who applied powers for benevolent ends. DC heroes were the older brothers who helped you against a hostile world - role models to identify with that went beyond, in more ways than one, respectable adult enforcers, like cops and soldiers. Marvel gave such a breed of heroes human problems, which made them seem less superior, though no less super. Kirby opened up the form to the challenge not only of prejudiced landlords, but of questions of life and power.
Graphic novels
During the 70s recession, comics got grimmer. Superheroes continued, but they were joined by Dracula and Swamp Thing. Batman became even more of a night vigilante. Spiderman was joined by The Punisher, a costumed sniper avenging the murder of his family.
The next significant innovations would take place in 1986 and 1987. Batman: the dark knight returns by Frank Miller was a continuation of the millionaire vigilante Bat tradition, but ventured into more disturbing territory. The Batman, as insider fans now called him, was no mere police helpmate. He was a revenge on the whole crime wave that in the competitive ethos of the 80s was identified with most of the inner city. As a personality the Bat was almost as psychotic as an old-fashioned villain. Miller seemed to be saying that this was what power now needed to be: slightly deranged - get used to it.
In the following year, 1987, there came another riposte to the traditional superhero - Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons. Watchmen showed superheroes as older, wiser and even more screwed up than before, and society itself as deeply flawed. As the English writer, Moore, commented, "All comics are political. All I was doing was commenting from an alternative perspective to the majority."
Both Dark knight and Watchmen had accessible but complex illustrations and a knowing, allusive attitude to the genre: they proved that comics had long since ceased being just for kids. These legendary books ended up being sold in the graphic novel format (large, thin paperback) via the growing circuit of specialist shops. Since the 70s a fan culture had grown up around the shops and with dealer fairs and conventions, many of whose members were the same age as the book's creators.
The age of self-consciousness had begun. Comic books could intensify the inner torment (Batman) or shuffle the ingredients in increasingly complicated ways (Superman). The prime features, though, were bewilderment and rage. As comics writer and columnist Mark Evanier wrote, these books were "filled with characters who for one reason or another were angry, striking out at the bad guys because they needed desperately to strike out at something".5
Meanwhile the more cutting-edge books of the genre showed superheroes taking over the government in The Authority or mere mortals dealing with superheroes as a problem in themselves, such as in the Powers series, where the male and female central characters are a couple of all-too-human cops. The old faith in heroes and leaders, especially if masculine, was out of fashion, even before the bad move of the Iraq invasion - and even in the movies.
Movies had already taken from the genre. George Lucas in Star wars may have got some inspiration from Kirby's Darkseid, but in some people's opinion not nearly enough. The Superman movie was the first to get the special effects right, but the most popular adaptation and in many fans' opinion the closest was Spiderman. Forty years of story and characters were smelted down into something that gelled, for the appreciation of both newcomers and veterans. The choice of Tobey Maguire to play Parker/Spidey was the most intelligent decision of all - he was a role model without being a male model.
X-2, the sequel to the Marvel movie X-Men, was even more in the contemporary mood. Here were young people - Generation X - alienated from a corrupt government and relying on each other more than anyone else. They were Friends against the state - though to keep it honest rather than smash or replace it. The superhero had come some distance from Rooseveltian messiahs helping the law in a private capacity. The genre had supplied everything from wish-fulfilment to creating an awareness of a mighty, hostile power out there - whether it could go any further is another question.
The consciousness revealed in today's comicbooks is by no means uncritical or unsophisticated: the readers they aim to please are alert to hype. It is not only comicbook fans who show less trust in heroes - though also less hope for the heroic in ourselves.
Those of us interested in social change might do well to study this mix of scepticism and discontent and find ways to engage with it.