Reinhold Reitberger and Wolfgang Fuchs

SOURCE: "Super-heroes," in Comics: Anatomy of a Mass Medium, translated by Nadia Fowler, Little, Brown and Company, 1972, pp. 100-29.

[In the following essay, Reitberger and Fuchs analyze the modern mythology of super heroes, concentrating on the powers, foes, companions, and female counterparts of Superman, Batman, and others.]

MODERN MYTHS

Superman—the man of steel, helper of all those in distress, defender of the weak and oppressed, strongest of all men, invincible, handsome as a god, noble and gentle—in short, a man far superior to any other human being. He is the ultimate hero, the epitome of his young readers' dreams.

There are so many heroes with superhuman qualities. Jules Feiffer once said that if they joined together with the even more numerous super-villains they would darken the skies like locusts. And all of them experience adventures without a break—mostly adventures of dimensions, countless times the earth, no, whole galaxies are rescued from destruction or enslavement and, on a smaller scale, America is made safe for democracy. Cosmic super-policemen, they patrol the universe, but they do not seek adventure in the same way as the old legendary heroes of mythology and legend did. They do not have to search for evil to combat: evil positively leaps at them and never lets them rest. Without pause they have to prove their super-faculties and powers, for their raison d'Mtre is constant battle. They go to battle as the ordinary man goes daily to his office.

The concept of the super-hero was new to comics. It arrived in 1938 in the shape of Superman. Tarzan, The Phantom, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, already established in comics at that time, were of course also superior beings; just like The Shadow, Nick Carter, Doc Savage or Sherlock Holmes, who had hunted down villains for decades in millions of cheap pulps.

But Superman and Co. presented a new species of hero to the comic book world—godlike, invincible creatures. Even the way they dressed was quite different. They wore colourful tights, with or without mask or cape, and this intriguing garb was a kind of trade-mark, like Hercules' lion skin.

Superman is as old as the ages. Achilles and Siegfried stood at his cradle—and they are all three invulnerable, except for Achilles' heel, the spot on Siegfried's back and Superman's susceptibility to kryptonite.

Super-heroes, these new 'characters' as they were at first referred to in the comics industry, all bore traces of old myths and legends. Joe Siegel described his 'Man of Steel' as 'the world's greatest adventure strip character', a 'character like Samson, Hercules and all the strong men I ever heard tell of rolled into one'. (In the beginning Superman did not have the exaggerated powers he later assumed.)

But not only Superman, other characters of comics also had mythical ancestors: the first Flash is a reincarnation of Mercury (note his costume!); the modern Icarus, Hawkman, of the Egyptian prince Knufu (a later version of Hawkman hails from the planet Thanagar); The Green Arrow, based on an Edgar Wallace tale, is a descendant of Robin Hood; Hawkeye is a modern Philoctet. Bill Finger must have had Aladdin in mind when he created The Green Lantern (he wanted to give Green Lantern the name of Alan Ladd to indicate his secret identity!) and Bill Everett, creator of Namor (Roman read backwards) was inspired by some lines in Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner.

Most super-heroes draw their special faculties from very ancient sources, but their characters are modified and changed to such an extent that today, with their modern images, they may be regarded as original. They express in today's idiom the ancient longing of mankind for a mighty protector, a helper, guide, or guardian angel who offers miraculous deliverance to mortals.

Marvel Comics have chosen the Nordic gods as their speciality. Olympians, such as Hercules, drop in on occasional visits. The noble Sif now prefers black hair, Thor is blonde, clean-shaven and no longer as uncouth as he used to be. He is super-hero and god rolled into one; with the help of lesser gods, goddesses and heroes he protects 'Midgard' (the Earth) and the whole of the universe. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, creators of this commercialized heroes' paradise, have dressed up Thor, God of Thunder, and the Tales of Asgard so expertly, in such thrilling modern versions, that American readers of Marvel Comics know more about Ragnarok, Yggdrasil or Bifrbst than the direct descendants of the Old Teutons.

Is it surprising that the adventures of super-heroes are called modern myths and that Marvel's Stan Lee, the great bard of these modern epics, is hailed as the Aesop and Homer of pop culture?

HISTORY OF THE SUPER-HEROES

The first super-heroes of modern comic epics were unleashed upon mankind at the end of the 1930s, after thousands of years of preparation through myth and legend. A foretaste of things to come was given in 1936, when Lee Falk's The Phantom, a mixture of mythological figure and super-hero, appeared on 17 February.

Although he was not endowed with supernatural powers the Phantom seemed immortal, for behind the mask he wore his personality remained forever hidden. True to the first Phantom's oath, his successors kept up the tradition throughout four centuries and created the impression of immortality. The absence of reality is expressed not only in the behaviour and the legendary deeds of the main character, but also in the localities chosen: the Phantom's realm is a large island called Bengali, off the East African coast. He rules in the deep forests, where his skull throne stands in the depths of the skull cave. This cave of memories is a forerunner of the super-heroes' haunts and hiding places where they keep their trophies and souvenirs, like Superman's fortress of solitude, or Batman's bat-cave.

The double identity aspect of super-heroes is also outlined in The Phantom, though in reverse and in a particularly complicated way: The Phantom divests itself of its individual personality in order to become a hero and the hero in turn takes on the additional aspect of Mr Walker (the Ghost Who Walks). Superman, in contrast, is first and foremost hero, and he dons his second identity (Clark Kent, the reporter) to hide his true 'super' nature from the ordinary mortals amongst whom he works.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, spiritual fathers of Superman, hawked their brainchild around for five years before they persuaded Action Comics to start publishing Superman in June 1938. The verdict of publishers had always been that it was too fantastic or not commercial, but time was ripe for the superman idea and Action Comics reaped a tremendous commercial success. Their editions doubled and in 1939 Superman conquered the newspaper strip columns as well. During the Second World War Superman belonged to the American soldier's equipment. He gave them hope and became their symbol of courage and determination, almost a substitute for conventional religion—to the horror of the army chaplains. The Second World War really established the super-heroes, for the Axis Powers provided an enemy against whom they could launch themselves with no holds barred. The fight started in earnest in 1941 and chauvinistic appeal was buttressed by encouragement to buy war bonds.

The enemies were now 'Nazi beasts' and 'Banzai'-yelling 'Nips'. Super-heroes found real adversaries against whom they could pit their strength, for the concept of the super-villain had not yet been fully developed. So far, super-heroes had mainly gone into action to combat natural catastrophes; now they found U-boats, battleships and all manner of enemy war potential to fight: 'twisting submarines into pretzels'. Superman really overshadows all other super-heroes for he possesses all the qualities imaginable for a super-hero: he is invulnerable, super-strong, superfast (he is faster than the speed of light and can therefore travel through time); he has X-ray eyes that can penetrate anything and microscopic view to detect the smallest atomic particle. His only weakness is connected with 'kryptonite', a radioactive, rock-like substance that was created through the explosion of Superman's home-planet Krypton. Kryptonite exists in a variety of colours: green kryptonite can weaken, even kill (!) Superman; it has no effect on ordinary human beings. Red kryptonite, invented in the fifties to create a new story potential, has qualities that affect Superman and other creatures of the planet Krypton in the most astounding way: it changes Superman's faculties and alters him physically or mentally; it can give him the ability to read minds, can change his head into that of a lion, can make him invisible or even transfer his faculties to others.

The magic potential of the red rock as well as other magic, can vanquish the noble hero—at least temporarily, but usually he perceives in good time what is afoot. He realizes, for instance, when Mr Mxyzptlk has played a magic trick on him, and induced by a ruse to pronounce his name backwards, the Superman-scorner disappears into the fifth dimension for another ninety instalments.

In Captain Marvel, one of the most successful superheroes in competition with Superman, magic also played an important role. The Captain transformed himself with the help of the magic formula Shazam, compounded out of the first letters of the names of ancient gods and demigods, to an accompaniment of thunder and lightning provided by a youthful radio-reporter called Billy Batson, into the superstrong hero Captain Marvel. Superman could only ask contemptuously: 'Shazam? What is Shazam?' and out of this contretemps arose one of the few disputes about plagiarism in the history of comics (launched by Superman's publishers, DC National Comics).

Superman's claim to the sole rights in a whole array of superpowers forced Captain Marvel to abandon the super-world. The argument that he was a Superman imitation won and permission to continue drawing his adventures was withdrawn. It was of no avail that Captain Marvel differed from Superman in important details and that he—though inspired by Superman—was more of a take-off of the real thing, drawn in an original and refreshingly new style; nor that a band of anthropomorphic animals were regular members of his crew. Jules Feiffer maintained that he did not even look like Superman, but resembled Fred MacMurray.

Superman's publishers also brought out Detective Comics (March 1937), a series which has in the meantime produced over 400 issues. Into this series Batman was born in issue No. 27 in May 1939. Batman stands at the other end of the super-hero spectrum. In contrast to the seemingly almighty Superman, he is an ordinary human being, like the Phantom, who trains (under the guidance of his creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger) until he is so well equipped in every way that he can tackle even the most dangerous criminals. Like many of his successors he is of independent means and can attend posh social functions—which always seem to attract crime—in the guise of playboy Bruce Wayne.

Around 1960 Batman was slowly dying, but a television series infused new life and vigour into him. True Batman fans were horrified at this pop version of Batman. At the end of the series, however, the enraged fans were mollified by the fact that on his thirtieth birthday Batman returned to his detective role with an added touch of the mysterious. His appearance on television had, needless to say, a most invigorating effect on the sales of Batman comic books. Finally, in December 1969, Batman closed his bat-cave temporarily and sent his young assistant Dick Grayson—who had aged only about four years since his first appearance in 1940—to college.

After their successful debut Superman and Batman had their own magazines, bearing their respective names as title; but they still remained faithful to the comic books that had sealed their fame. Superman was so successful that even the adventures of his boyhood were related in special series for Adventure Comics and Superboy. Some casual critics thought they were the adventures of his kid brother!

In 1950 comic books about Superman's girl friend Lois Lane and his friend Jimmy Olsen started to appear. The latter had been invented specially for a radio series. To top it all Superman and Batman appeared together and shared adventures in World's Finest Comics, and here the two heroes took the opportunity of revealing to each other their otherwise strictly secret identities. (This instance apart, nobody, except perhaps President Kennedy, has ever been told!) The two super-heroes also appeared together in Justice League of America, a collection of National Comics' most popular heroes.

The success of the super-heroes encouraged many imitations; but they had to have their special gimmicks, choose their own names, apparel, town of origin, etc. Generally speaking National Comics heroes live in imaginary towns, which all belong to the same type of city: Superman lives in Metropolis (a name inspired by Fritz Lang's famous film); Batman in Gotham City; Flash, the super-sprinter, in Central City. Marvel Comics are more realistic in their approach: most of their heroes live and work in New York City.

Many heroes who followed in Superman's wake experienced a short blossoming between 1940 and 1949 before the market became saturated and the readers lost interest. The patriotic flames that had inspired the heroes and had spurred them on to action during wartime had died down. But during the years between 1958 and 1962—and this was still before the comics renaissance—some super-heroes were dug up again and reinstated in a modernized version, or were created anew. The new creations appeared together with some of the old heroes, and the super-heroes' long absence was explained by National Comics, for instance, by the existence of parallel worlds situated in the same space in the universe, but in different dimensions. So as to distinguish them these parallel worlds are called Earth One, Earth Two, etc., up to any number, and their invention opened up many possibilities for new themes and variations of themes.

It is almost impossible to prove that a comics firm has copied super-hero-ideas from another; anyhow, nowadays competition is no longer quite so keen on the hero market. It is practically divided into two groups only: Marvel and DC, and if heroes like sprinters Flash (DC National), Lightning (Tower) and Quicksilver (Marvel) all seem to have the same quality of speed, each one attained it in a different way. Flash received it through a chemical reaction induced by lightning; Lightning through a machine invented by two scientists, and Quicksilver had been born with it through some happy mutation of genes.

Other newly awakened heroes proved to be particularly tough and indestructible as, for instance, Captain America who lay frozen in the Arctic ice for twenty years—as this series had in fact been 'on ice' the idea had a nice, ironic touch. But Captain America had been seen to throw his shield about him in heroic fervour during the days of the Cold War around 1955! A clever reader found an explanation: the interim Captain had not been the real Captain, but only his brother. As a brother had been mentioned in earlier Captain America stories, it seemed a reasonable suggestion.

Publishers leave it to their readers to explain apparent incongruities arising out of the difference between real time and comics time. In comics, as in Shakespeare's dramas, a dual time system is used; but whilst in drama years are telescoped into a manageable period of action, in comics the life span of a hero is extended like elastic in order to press as many episodes into it as possible.

Flash, Green Lantern and some of the others were given a new lease of life even before the second comics boom started in the sixties; however, no new ground was broken until 1962, when Marvel Comics' Stan Lee invented The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and a fresh wind began to blow through the wilting super-hero epics. The new, modern, more reality-orientated super-heroes were joined in the years that followed by Thor, Daredevil, Iron Man, Hulk, Silver Surfer, the resurrected Captain America, Submariner and others. The new 'Marvel Age of Comics' had broken upon mankind—at least for the next decade. For Shakespeare lover Stan Lee (in private life Stanley Lieber) the super-hero stories have the same function that fairy-tales, myths, legends and romances had for earlier generations.

Marvel Comics, whose heroes have very human failings, produce stories of a humorous, slightly ironic vein, and the same recipe helped many an ailing hero of the great competitive firm National Periodical Publications to new life and vigour.

The enthusiasm for new experiments, which triggered off the boom of the sixties, led also to more socially orientated themes. Some of the heroes such as Green Lantern and Green Arrow even cast off their uniforms—at least for a while—and in their search for truth found themselves face to face at last with reality and the social problems that beset the land.

MARVEL—A NEW ERA

1962 the new 'Marvel Age of Comics'—as Marvel themselves modestly called it—started triumphantly. Nostalgic memories of days when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby produced all that was best in comics almost single-handed!

Marvel continued the work of the Timely Comics Group which had started this 'squinky division of the comics business'—the super-heroes—in November 1939. When, at the end of the forties, the super-heroes lost their hold on the public, romances and modified horror took their place. At this point Timely changed their name to Atlas Comics. In 1962 they decided to start again where thirteen years earlier—as Timely—they had stopped. Stan Lee was at the head of the undertaking and they now changed their name to Marvel, because of the tremendous success of Marvel Comics during the Golden Age.

Marvel called itself the 'House of Ideas' right from the start, and many of the themes taken up really were new. Not only were the heroes themselves fresh products of their creators' imagination, the ways in which they were presented had an entirely new and original approach. Serials, in many instalments, made it possible to give the characters a much greater complexity than they had ever had before.

The first of the new super-heroes were The Fantastic Four. On the title page of their booklets the words 'The World's Greatest Comics' were printed in all modesty, starting with the very first issue. Through cosmic radiation the scientist Reed Richards changes into a rubber-like man (reminiscent of Plastic Man and Elongated Man) called Mr. Fantastic; the same cosmic incident turns Benjamin Grimm into an orange-coloured colossus, 'The Thing', with only four fingers on each hand (like Mickey Mouse); Sue Storm becomes the Invisible Girl and her brother Johnny the Human Torch. Thus endowed by fate with superhuman qualities, these chosen ones decide to stay together as a group and they call themselves The Fantastic Four.

In his own way each Marvel hero is also an anti-hero. The Hulk, for instance, described by a reader as the 'true existential man', is the comic's Dr Jekyll (Dr Bruce Banner) and Mr Hyde (Hulk). The Hulk's green-coloured body and square-cut face call Frankenstein to mind. He is a truly tragic character.

Dr Strange, master of the mystic arts, explorer of every dimension of every fantastic realm, whose psychedelic adventures were superbly drawn by Steve Ditko and Gene Colan, attained his powers only after he had experienced and overcome a depression so deep brought him to the very edge of crime.

Daredevil is a blind lawyer who finds new dimensions in his blindness; his 'radar sense', brought about through radioactivity, allows him to 'see' with his ears.

One of the heroes, Marvel's Spider-Man, has to tend his torn spider's costume again and again and experiences in business and in private life one mishap after another. He goes through traumatic crises of identity and suffers from almost paranoiac attacks of self-doubt; but he never gives up, despite all his near misses, disappointments and outrageous accidents. He is the most tenacious and absurdly heroic character of them all.

Spider-Man, in his secret identity of Peter Parker, is handicapped by constant fear for his Aunt May, for whom the slightest excitement could mean death. He is always short of money and earns a precarious living by photographing himself in battle with an automatic camera, and selling the pictures to the Daily Bugle for a pittance. J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the paper, has out of envy of the hero denounced him to the press and television as a public menace, so that the police as well as the public are in doubt as to whether Spider-Man is a friend or a foe of society.

Peter Parker could become a brilliant scientist if he were not so preoccupied with his super-hero existence. He is an outsider at college, just as he had been at high school, and as he keeps on missing his lectures his marks are not as good as they should be. His Spider-Man alter ego constantly comes between him and the normal joys of a healthy young American; his love life too is just one long misery.

His intense suffering and frustration make of Spider-Man the most human of all the super-heroes, and because the reader himself suffers with his hero, Spider-Man is above all other Marvel heroes the most popular on the university campus. Readers' letters from his fans, the 'spidophiles', beg that their 'Spidey' may at last be given just a little bit of good luck; but whatever happens one thing is certain: any good luck coming the way of the 'friendly neighbourhood wallcrawler' will be of short duration only!

The most controversial Marvel hero is Captain America, super patriot and spirit incarnate of the USA. Dressed in the Stars and Stripes he incorporates American ideology and the establishment-perpetuating principle expressed by all the super-heroes. Captain America's first action on the title page of his first issue (March 1941) was to crash his fist into Hitler's face. He went on fighting in this vein, his little battle companion Bucky at his side, against Nazis and Japs until 1949. It strikes one as odd that this fervent defender of American democracy, of all people, should personify an idea preached by Nazi ideology: the concept of breeding supermen. Captain America starts as plain Steve Rogers, a weakling who is not accepted by the army despite all his patriotic enthusiasm. Steve, however, is taken in hand by Professor Reinstein (!) who turns him, through a scientific experiment, into a superman. He is the first of a planned series of super-agents. But Professor Reinstein is killed by Nazi agents and takes the secret superman formula with him to the grave, and so Captain America (alias Steve Rogers) remains the only Super-American.

In the McCarthy era 'Cap', as he was affectionately called, awoke to brief life again as a 'Commie-Smasher'; but he only came back permanently in 1964, as a 'Living Legend of World War Two'. Towards the end of the sixties, when America's image began to alter, Captain America became something of an anachronism. His creators are aware of this. Torn by self-doubt, Captain America even searched for a new image as a sort of Easy Rider (1970)—whilst controversy still rages on around him.

The one hero through whom Stan Lee openly moralizes—if we forget about the many short Marvel Westerns through which a strong moral wind blows—is the Silver Surfer, a quasi-messianic figure. 'We try to portray this without satire,' says Stan Lee. The Silver Surfer's former name was Norrin Radd and he used to live on the planet Zenn-La (!). He becomes the messenger of Galactus, a super-super creature who feeds on the energy of whole worlds; but one day, when Galactus' appetite turns earthwards, Norrin refuses to obey his master. In punishment, he loses some of his powers and is banished to earth. Norrin has to accept the cruel exile from his home planet, and gliding through the air on his surfboard, he tries to better mankind. Sometimes he despairs of his self-imposed task and feels like destroying the whole, graceless globe. What puzzles him most of all about human beings is the fact that they are the only inhabitants in the universe who kill in the name of justice.

Marvel also produced the first black super-hero. The Black Panther appeared for the first time in July 1966 on the pages of the Fantastic Four comic book. The name, however, was chosen in ignorance of later developments.

The ingredient which above all others contributed to the success of Marvel Comics was a new special type of communication with the readership. Readers' letters pages were nothing new and 'Brand X', or 'Ecch' (Marvel's name for their competitors) ran them as well; but the long, witty replies to readers' comments, written in a personal and friendly tone, extended the 'letter corner' to two pages and it became the most popular feature of the comic book. Marvel invented the 'No-prize', which is not given for the best readers' letter, and the non-existent Irving Forbush. The reader was made one of the Marvel family, a 'keeper of the flame'. Marvel started a comics club, just as the defunct E.C. Comics had done, and called it 'MMMS'. But unfortunately after having fallen into other, purely commercial hands, and lost its connection with the publishers, the club had to be disbanded in 1971. Since 1962 the author's and the artist's credits appear in Marvel publications on the first page of each story. This means that the reader can always see straightaway who wrote and drew the comics; other comics publishers have never done this. In 1965 the 'Bullpen News' page was introduced, which revealed editorial secrets and made of readers true insiders. This personal approach was later successfully copied by other publishers.

The high standard of Marvel publications made them interesting also to older readers, and the average age of the Marvel Comics readership is far higher than that of any other comics publishing concern. In the mid-sixties Marvel was favourite reading matter on the campus for both students and professors.

THE SUPER-HERO BOOM

Anything that is successful is imitated or produced in series. This principle is valid in America for all popular arts. No wonder, then, that Superman and Batman started the first super-hero boom in the forties. But it took twenty years before something similar happened again.

The contents of Superman and Batman stories were direct continuations of the type of adventure-novel themes around Doc Savage, Black Bat and other characters published by the pulps. The firm Timely (now Marvel) also picked up threads of pulp stories in their comics when the penny dreadfuls themselves were suffering heavy readership losses. Pictured in comics, those stories became even more exciting.

During the first, wild founder years, plagiarism was considered at the worst as ungentlemanly; 'swiping', that is copying other artists, or pinching ideas and producing them slightly modified, was common practice and accepted as a legitimate means of improving output. A firm inventing an original character, a first-born among super-heroes, had to expect a series of imitations to spring up in all the other comics. Great artist like Alex Raymond, Hal Foster or Burne Hogarth would find imitations of their work an everyday occurrence. Timely's Human Torch soon had his descendants—such as Firehair, Firefly, Fiery Mask, Firebrand and Pyroman, to name but a few. 'Swiping' was simply part of the business. Bill Everett, creator of Timely's Submariner, designed two copies of his own character for other firms and drew for them Hydroman and The Fin.

The number of super-heroes grew and became legion. To name only a few of the most important: The Angel, Atom, Blue Bolt, Comet, Crimson Avenger, Destroyer, Dr Fate, Dr Mid-Nite (!), Guardian, Hangman, HourMan, Hurricane, Johnny Quick and his magic formula [3x2(9y)4A], Ka-Zar, Manhunter, Marvel Boy, Plastic Man, Robotman, Sandman, Skyman, Starman, Thunderer, Web and Wildcat.

Captain America began in March 1941 by practically deciding the outcome of the war singlehanded; and on the crest of a tremendous patriotic wave were born no less than forty (!) Captain America imitations, among them The American Avenger, The Super American, The Flag, The Patriot, and Major Liberty. Chauvinism was mirrored in such titles as The American Comic Book, All Star Comics, Star-Spangled Comics, All-American Comics, etc. Timely even produced a comic book called U.S.A. and a hero of the same name.

The pulps had been only a kind of foundation stone for the super-heroes; what really triggered them off were tensions within the social structure of the country—just as happened again later, in the sixties. Superman and Batman were born just before a great world conflict. They mirrored the spirit of the era and America's attitude towards political problems; they expressed the idea that America was the saviour and preserver of all true social values, guardian of democracy, deliverer of the oppressed from the bondage of Fascism and National Socialism.

After the Korean War interest in super-heroes began to dwindle. Cheap patriotic morale boosters and blood-thirsty horror comics were no longer in demand.

Patriotic enthusiasm could not always find the outlet against someone which Gustave Doré had pointed out but in comics such emotions could be kept alive, compensated, and guided into suitable channels. Publishers of comics kept a finger on the public's pulse and had an instinct for trends among their readership. Comics written and designed on Government contracts for the army were, of course, a different matter. They mirrored the government's political line.

Then came the renewed American comics boom of the early sixties. This boom too was initiated by super-heroes. But the new type had their own particular neuroses and foibles: a reaction to the public's growing boredom with stereotyped black and white presentation of good and evil by all the mass media. To this were added the explosions of social conflict and the Vietnam War. Once again the success of comics was promoted by war; but this was not the only reason for their resurrection. The first boom still glowed across two decades. The old comics awakened nostalgia for lost childhood and the new generation of grown-ups did not forbid their kids to read comics—as their parents had done.

Publishers of comics took note of the trend. The reappraisal of the American consciousness was taken into account. That is why the 'message' of comics is no longer as crystal clear as it used to be. It is still oriented towards law and moral principles, but it has at least become thoughtful and probing. The innocent naivety of the Golden Age of comics has been lost and the concept of the super-hero is being questioned; comics are drawing ever closer to reality and the great problems of our day.

For these reasons the second boom is also drawing to its end, but the near future has certainly some surprises in store for us. Marvel will have to kindle fresh enthusiasm and will surely come up with ideas of how to modernize the family of super-heroes.

EXTENDED POWERS

Only one hero is mightier even than Superman: The Spectre, a spirit who walks the earth and has practically unlimited powers. He can alter his appearance at will, can make himself invisible, can transform matter, etc., etc. Compared with Superman and Spectre, all other super-heroes have very limited powers. They possess only one, or at best a few specially developed faculties. Their particular 'speciality' or sometimes their origin, is expressed in their name: Spider-Man, Aqua-Man, or the Elongated Man, and often alliteral second names are lovingly added, like The Winged Wonder for Hawkman, The Sultan of Speed, The Viscount of Velocity or The Scarlet Speedster for Flash; Batman is The Caped Crusader.

Any one of us can become a super-hero by mere accident! It is so easy: usually no more is needed than a scientific experiment that slightly misfires; the inhaling of vapours released, the accidental touching of a substance, chemicals combined with the striking of lightning (shades of Frankenstein?) and hey presto! a new superhero is born!

Batman, however, shows us that we can attain to superheroship through sheer industry, tenacious endeavour, and a large enough private fortune—running into millions—to acquire all the necessary super-hero equipment. There is no bodily function except sexual prowess (strictly taboo) that could not be suitably extended or adjusted to serve super-hero purposes.

Flash, for instance, can run at such speed that even the surface of water seems to be solid; he can deflect bullets with air compressed by a wave of his hand, or he can agitate his atoms into such high vibrations that bullets pass straight through him without causing any damage. He can also 'vibrate' himself through locked doors and solid walls by the same method. Speed has, in his case, also a most detrimental effect: in his private life he seems to be the slowest, most unpunctual of human beings. No wonder, when he has to tear off on some tricky mission just as he is supposed to keep some ordinary humdrum appointment as plain Mr Barry Allen.

Green Lantern has, at first glance, no special faculties. He achieves his incredible feats with the help of a ring; but the ring functions at the will of its master. Hal Jordan, in his Green Lantern identity, finishes off any adversary with his unlimited fund of clever ideas and his unbreakable willpower; but he must also do the bidding of the guardians on planet Oa, for they supply the energy (which always lasts for 24 hours) from a lantern-shaped source of power. The ring, however, has one weakness: it is powerless against anything of yellow colour. A man who sees (nearly) all his endeavours crowned by success thanks to such a device is always in danger of gradually losing faith in his own personal abilities and so Green Lantern started to hit out with his own fist from time to time, instead of conjuring a giant plasma fist from out of the ring. To restore his self-confidence the guardians of Oa cut down the supply of energy, so that he could no longer rely on a last power reserve to get him out of mortal danger. Now that Green Lantern knows he has to apply his own strength and mind and can no longer rely on completely automatic salvation, he has become much more human and understanding and willing to tackle ordinary problems of everyday life instead of battling endlessly against a host of imaginary enemies.

To augment their various super-powers and use them collectively, super-heroes often band together in superhero organizations or groups. Among such bands of super-heroes are DC's Justice League of America (a new group modelled on Justice Society of America of Golden Age days), the Legion of Super-heroes and the Teen Titans. Marvel drew several of its heroes together in The Avengers, so that they could unite in battle against super-foes who had formed themselves into super-villain organizations. For the reader the main attraction probably lies in the opportunity of seeing several super-darlings in action at the same time.

SUPER-SEX

Due to the strictly enforced rules of the Code Authority (1954), it is only in caricatures like those in MAD that Superman gives rein to his exhibitionist tendencies whilst changing his clothes in a telephone box (in reality he prefers broom closets or dark alleys), or used his X-ray eyes to glance furtively into the ladies' toilet.

For one super-power is denied all super-heroes: super-sexual powers; and the widespread longing among ordinary mortal men for a penis of super dimensions can never be compensated through the figure of a favourite super-hero. Super-heroes as well as super-villains seem to have absolutely nothing to show underneath their tight-fitting tights; they all appear to be poor androgynous beings—hermaphrodites who lack the primary sexual organs. Jack Kirby's figures, who always stand with their feet at least four feet apart, make this lack pretty obvious.

By simply omitting to mention sex, comics authors achieve the same effect as the loincloth or the fig-leaf does in some paintings or sculptures, and the youthful reader is denied compensation for his most secret and private inferiority complexes.

A sterile, 'clean' world is created in which all the heroes are—at least to look at—androgynes.

The sexual self-denial of the super-heroes may be based on masochism connected with their high battle morale. Their chaste, at best monogamous behaviour stands in glaring contrast to their potential virility. What a paradox, that super-heroes should have to act towards women like ordinary, shy, merely human men! And so the super-hero remains, in one of the most important and vital aspects, a highly unsatisfactory figure of identification for ordinary, frustrated men.

Just imagine Superman's sexual possibilities! He could offer wish fulfilment to every male; he could possess the most beautiful women of the universe, either by subduing them with charm like some super-Casanova, or by taking them by force—and enjoying super-orgasms at any time and for any length of time. But as it is the question must remain: Portnoy Superman still going strong after thirty-two years?

Super-heroines have to behave in an even more absurdly Victorian manner. What possibilities have been missed here! What about Supergirl, Superman's female counterpart? The professionally trained female Circassian slaves of Suleman the Second's harem would appear as naive beginners compared with Supergirl's super-powers of vaginal muscle contraction.

It is idle to try to imagine the sexual practices of super-heroes. As far as we know, Iris Allen, Flash's wife, has never yet complained; and what would Captain America's girl friends say if they saw that their hero's underpants also bore the Stars and Stripes?

Possibly, but not very likely, further liberalization may loosen the Code in the course of the seventies and allow heroes with hypertrophied sexual powers to appear not only in the pages of underground comics.

THE 'SIDE-KICK'

When comics were accused of having a bad effect on youth, critics pounced on seemingly homosexual traits in super-heroes. Dr Wertham saw a direct link with homosexual fancies in Batman and the Boywonder Robin. His attitude triggered off a controversy, if not to say a libellous propaganda campaign, that is still raging today.

The youthful 'side-kick' is really based on an old tradition of American minor fiction and serialized pulp literature. Tough, resilient, self-reliant, unafraid and honest: this was the image of the typical, one-hundred-per-cent American boy. He was also expected to be clever, humorous and clean. More often than not he was an orphan boy who had had to stand on his own feet from a tender age. Horatio Alger Jr's books had a great part in creating this archetype of the All-American boy. In his many cheap novelettes such boys blossomed in the asphalt jungle of New York—they usually hailed from Brooklyn—and on their way from rags to riches they caught many a grown-up gangster. Such boys, salt of the (American) earth, were of course immediately snapped up by comics and made into boy heroes. Much better identification-figures for young readers than the grown-up heroes! There were also boys who clubbed together in teams and the leader was always the toughest and most American of them all. They fought in countless booklets of the Golden Age during the forties and naturally helped win the war. The Boy Commandos under the leadership of Captain Rip Carter, The Young Allies, The Tough Kids Squad fought behind or in front of the enemy lines. The Newsboy Legion fought at home against crime and the infiltration of enemy agents. When Jack Kirby changed over again from Marvel to DC in 1970 he could take his Newsboy Legion into battle again; but now a little Negro boy had joined their ranks.

It was natural that publishers should try to enhance the success of grown-up heroes by letting boy heroes fight at their side, or by giving the boys a grown-up helper. The Newsboy Legion fought together with the Guardian! Kids were so popular as comics heroes that they quite often pushed a super-hero out of his own comic book; many heroes went into battle with smaller editions of themselves at their side: The Human Torch and Toro, The Sandman and Sandy, The Shield and Rusty, The Green Arrow and Speedy, Captain America and Bucky, and many other teams. All of them, just as Superman and Jimmy Olsen, or as Achilles and Patrocles, Dietrich of Bern and Hildebrand, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, for that matter, may be suspected for their friendships.

In Love and Death in the American Novel Leslie Fiedler explains that there is more between men than just the sacred element of friendship and cites Ishmael and Queequeg, Natty Bumppo and Chingachgook, Huck and Nigger Jim as examples. And so, if we follow the Freudian interpretation, the super-heroes and their young battle companions are but an extension of a truly American tradition. This is neither the time nor the place to contradict Leslie Fiedler, one of the few quotable apologists of the comics culture.

Feiffer adds his comment when he says that American society as a whole takes a misogynist's view of women: 'not only homosexuals, nobody likes them'. This is expressed in all American forms of entertainment from the party joke to comics to films and literature.

Stereotyped clichés of the early comics era naturally fostered the idea of repressed sexual undertones; but for a long time now the tendency has been towards emphasis of the heterosexual, and modern super-heroes have proved their virility by the many marriages that have taken place in their ranks. The Fantastic Four couple has already produced—after the appropriate time lag—splendid progeny. Batman has sent teenage-wonder Robin to college where he seems to show a normal and lively interest in the opposite sex. Young battle companions, however, since they have aroused such unhealthy suspicions, are no longer popular with publishers.

MOTIVATION

Super-heroes have little or nothing in common with Nietzsche's Superman. They live by comparatively conventional morals; they are for good against evil, whereby they adhere strictly to the law's definition of good and evil.

They are always ready to avert catastrophes, help damsels in distress, prevent crimes being committed or injustice being done and to save the earth, or even other, faraway planets from destruction; under the Code Authority rules they undertake never to kill intentionally in their battles against villainy.

Super-heroes mete out their punishment in such well-measured doses that the enemy is either knocked out, can be captured without difficulty, or is able to flee—suitably humiliated, of course—only to return to a revenge attack. This saves the authors from having to invent ever new antagonists, and if they cannot think of anything new they can fall back on a series of hardboiled, tough villains who, either out of greed or lust for revenge, are always willing to risk another round. The noble superheroes enjoy their role of helper in distress which allows them to jump into the arena when some worthwhile heroic deed beckons—without being saddled with the responsibility of solving social problems. The criminals they fight are super-criminals and the big gang rings are just super-criminal syndicates; that crime is a symptom of sickness in a society is never stated, because the super-heroes are interested primarily in the battle against crime, not in the removal of its causes. They are rarely concerned with the rehabilitation of a criminal, even less with circumstances that led him into crime. Sometimes (as once in an adventure of Spider-Man) a hero can persuade a criminal to change his ways, but on the whole super-heroes accept that a power of evil exists which not even they can break. All they can do is to fight against it. A Sisyphean task that has kept them young for decades.

For a long time super-heroes believed that they were faultless knights in shining armour. They had so many gallant deeds to perform that they never found time to think; or the thought of revenge that had prompted them to take up super-heroism as a career (Batman) closed their minds against the realities that ruled society. They thought, spoke and acted in clichés, were fitted with spiritual blinkers and saw everything in harsh contours of black and white; in-between shades did not exist: democracy was good, Fascism, Nazism, Communism bad. In Senator McCarthy's days they were his allies and staunchly toed the government line and the line of Hoover's FBI; their spiritual heritage was middle-class and petty bourgeois; they were liberal-conservative like their inventors, belonged to the silent majority and believed that tough measures resolved conflicts.

In the course of time and with the birth of a new species of the genre, however, super-heroes have changed. They have undergone (and are still undergoing) a process of reappraisal. Suddenly heroes like Green Lantern are becoming aware of the existence of racial problems, and of the fact that villains sometimes sit behind desks. Nothing is resolved as yet; but this is only natural. Today's problems are too complicated to be treated to rash quick-fire action solutions—and to prove entertaining into the bargain. But it is to be expected that progressive publishers, editors, authors and artists will continue to humanize their heroes; which means, among other things, that they will have to accept a defeat from time to time.

THE SECRET IDENTITY

What is not going to change in the forseeable future is the rigid convention of giving super-heroes a secret identity. It is part of their psychological defence mechanism. Each super-hero chooses in the beginning of his career a disguise and a battle name. Usually he decides to frighten his adversaries, so as to defeat them psychologically as well as physically. He dons a mask and in doing so reaches back to the age-old custom of exorcising demons and evil spirits by frightening them with a terrifying disguise. Today the villains stand in the place of evil spirits. The super-hero's disguise has therefore a mythical element.

Apart from any deeper meaning, costume and mask satisfy a natural urge to have fun, to dress up. The superhero divides himself into two component parts, each playing its role: the alter ego and the secret identity. The dream half (alter ego) expresses all that the author or designer—and with him the reader—would like to be; the other half, rooted in reality, is a symbol of the ordinary everyday man following the behaviour pattern ordained by society. It is a division of life into dream and reality typical for the average citizen and serves to strengthen the individual's self-confidence and to justify his personal way of thinking.

There is a serious drawback, though, to the super-hero's dual life: he cannot (and usually does not want to) marry. A family would lay him open to blackmail and all kinds of pressures. 'Darling, I can't marry you, you wouldn't be safe,' are the words the marriage-bent Lois Lane, Superman's girlfriend, has to hear again and again. Celibacy does, of course, aid the popularity of super-heroes; just as it enhances the success of pop stars. To compensate for marriage DC comics have hit upon the idea of imaginary stories; that is, stories are told within the story, in which Superman marries and goes through imaginary experiences. This leads to the paradox that Superman remains single but can, nevertheless, enjoy married bliss in his own personal dreamworld; the reader, of course, gets the best of both worlds.

Lately, however, weddings have not been as taboo in the super-hero world as they used to be. Reed Richards (Mr Fantastic) and Sue Storm (Invisible Girl) of the Fantastic Four have become Mr and Mrs; so have Yellowjacket (alias Goliath, alias Ant-Man, alias Henry Pym) and the Wasp of the Avengers. Barry (Flash) Allen took an ordinary mortal as wife: his girlfriend of long years standing Iris West, the journalist. On the first day of their marriage he confesses that he is Flash—only to be told that she has known this long since, because he talks in his sleep.

Could not each one of us be a disguised super-hero? Our visible appearance only the facade of our much more exciting alter ego? The super-hero's secret identity is made in our own image, and it is not a particularly flattering one, as the example of Clark Kent shows. Super-careers force super-heroes to lead particularly drab private lives. They cannot make use of their special faculties in the course of normal, everyday life without betraying their secret; their tragedy is that they have to live one half of their lives as normal, humdrum mortals without being able to find fulfilment in that sphere. (Feiffer calls it the super-heroes' masochism.)

The 'little man' likes to project his wishful thinking into the shape of a big, strong man. Super-heroes are no more than the expression and fixation of narcissistic self-aggrandisement; they show how the adolescent reader, or the infantile grown-up sees himself in his dreams. Super-heroes fulfil the youngster's longing to be like the heroes of legend, fairy-tale and myth, and offer him a perfect identification figure.

It is interesting to note that characters like Superman, Captain America and Batman were invented by their creators when they were still of school age.

As identification figures the super-heroes also express the current ideals of masculine beauty; and it is not always packed muscle, but more often the movement of the figure in action that primarily interests the designer. Jack Kirby supplies his heroes with muscles no anatomy chart would ever show, and yet they appear organically quite sound; not because they enhance the quality of strength portrayed in the figure of Captain America or Thor, but because they introduce an impression of explosive action into a static picture. Bull-necked Superman and Captain America were fashioned according to the taste of their time: modelled on the Charles Atlas body-building-school ideal with Herculean muscles as a narcissistic aim for which to strive. Modern super-heroes mirror a different ideal of male shapeliness and the Silver Surfer, for instance, reminds us of statues by Praxiteles or Lysippos.

SUPER-HEROINES

The relatively small number of beautiful females in comic books of the sixties seems to reflect America's misogyny, but is, in fact, mainly the result of the strict censorship introduced in 1954; also most comics writers and artists are male and they quite naturally express their own dreams and repressed wishes first.

In the glorious days of the forties, the heyday of the comics hero, a great many shapely heroines firmly stood their ground in comics pages and competed with the men. Captain America had a whole range of female imitations: Miss America, Liberty Bell, Miss Victory, Pat Patriot and Yankee Girl, all of them even more patriotic than their male model. Captain Marvel had his female counterpart in Marvel Girl, Hawkman in Hawkgirl, and today, as then, a Batgirl sometimes crosses Batman's path.

In the world of legends and fairy-tales it is always the prince who rescues the maiden, never the other way round. Girls who act like men could only be found among Amazons, and so the first and most famous of all super-heroines was a descendant of the Amazons. Wonder Woman, created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, inventor of the lie-detector, under the pseudonym of Charles Moulton and drawn by H. G. Peters in a strangely flat, two-dimensional style, was the daughter of the Queen of Paradise Island, an Amazon realm no male was allowed to enter. These Amazons were under the protection of Aphrodite; like her companions Wonder Woman was created by breathing life into a statue—the problem of the Amazons' procreation was solved.

Wonder Woman was sent to America to help defend democracy against Fascism. She wore, as befitted her mission, Stars and Stripes on her shorts and her breasts were supported by the wings of the American Eagle. For two and a half decades she fought with her magic lasso, her invisible aeroplane and her bracelets of Amazonium (which deflects all missiles) against all sorts of crimes, which often took the shape of an evil female adversary.

Wonder Woman was no creature of harsh masculinity. In her secret identity of Diana Prince, the bespectacled W.A.C. nurse, she could be of almost helpless femininity. She also had strict moral principles. Helpless girls, gagged and bound, struggled through many a Wonder Woman story and a fat little friend called Etta Candy was for a long time battle companion in most of her adventures. No wonder that the critics not only cried sado-masochism, but also suspected the same goings on between Wonder Woman and Etta which they suspected between Batman and Robin.

Up to 1968 Wonder Woman remained an Amazon. She held Steve Trevor, the pilot who had fallen in love with her, at arm's length, though she had fallen for him at first sight. In October 1968 she took off her uniform—at least for the time being. Her role had become anachronistic. She opened a fashion boutique and plunged headlong into the sorrows of love, because she now fell for the wrong guy.

Feminine softness in the midst of the hard, cruel battle against evil—girls who could put men on the rack—it needed a very delicate touch to make such things acceptable to the mainly male readership. Lee Elias was superbly successful with his black-haired Black Cat (appeared 1942 in Speed Comics) and so was Syd Shores when he launched The Blonde Phantom in 1944.

After 1948 sex was beginning to be strongly emphasized in comics and Gregory Page created The Phantom Lady, a very feminine super-heroine indeed, as her generous decolleté proclaimed. But after 1954, when the Code Authority had come into being, all the girls except Wonder Woman, whether they had super-powers or lived in the jungle, disappeared into the comics limbo, and only a few made a comeback in the sixties, notably the Black Canary and The Black Widow. For a while comics denied American matriarchy and sexual behaviour and showed a world ruled exclusively by men. Even the slightest suggestion of sex stimulus was avoided; censorship would have clamped down immediately on any accentuation of the female form. What, girls in tight-fitting tights? Impossible!

Some years after Superman's cousin had landed on earth—'She's been among us for years, and we never suspected! Imagine that!!'—she became Supergirl, the world's greatest heroine. Superman introduced her to the astonished world in February 1966 (Action Comics 285). 'She's terrific! Cute, too!' and 'What a Superdoll!!' were some of the delirious comments. In the same story Kruschev remarked laconically: 'It must be a capitalist hoax!'

A new readership draw had been found. Supergirl's second identity is that of Linda Lee Danvers, model of the perfect American college girl; and that is probably the reason why the Code Authority did not object to Super-girl's well-shaped legs being set off to their best advantage by the shortest of miniskirts.

When Marvel introduced the new 'Marvel Age of Comics' in 1962 and censorship was beginning to loosen its iron grip, the firm poured more and more heroines onto its pages: Invisible Girl (now a mother), The Wasp, The Scarlet Witch, Medusa, Crystal and Marvel Girl.

SUPER-VILLAINS

Super-heroes and super-heroines upset the balance between good and evil by their mere existence and to redress this balance super-villains were invented. Normally, each super-hero has his counterpart in the world of villainy. This is a method well tried by many authors of serial novels. We only have to think of Sherlock Holmes and his adversary Dr Moriarty. Comics copied the theme and produced Captain America and the Red Skull, Superman and Lex Luthor, Batman and The Joker, Reed Richards and Dr Doom, and many others.

Each super-hero has an enemy tailored to challenge and match his own particular faculties. The perfect examples are Human Torch and his adversary, The Asbestos Lady; but to match, for instance, The Spider-Man against Galactus would mean the hero's certain death, and to avoid such outrageous catastrophes each hero fights only within his own heroic class.

But in the long run one enemy alone is no challenge for a full-blooded super-hero. The enemy has to disappear behind bars from time to time or even to be presumed dead. If the same villain arrested at the end of one story should reappear at the beginning of the next, the reader might be tempted to conclude that the punishment did not fit the crime. Criminals must always get their just deserts in the end and are often seemingly killed stone dead; a few stories later, however, the reader learns to his surprise that once again, as many times before, a miracle has saved the evil-doer's worthless life. Once more, he can go into action and challenge our hero with his deeds of villainy and deceit.

If the popularity of a hero drops to such a low level that his particular comic book has to be discontinued, it still does not mean that he has to die. In a few years' time readers may like to hear of him again—and up he pops in a modernized version. Hence the saying goes in comics: 'Old super-heroes (like soldiers) never die, they only fade away.…' They fade into the comics limbo, that uncertain region where jobless heroes and villains go until recalled.

Since the censorship of 1954 came into force death is only shown as fiction in comics: a kind of unreal state of non-existence which can never figure as a satisfactory solution to any problem. There are only a few exceptions and these made history: Tower Comics let Menthor, hero of Thunder Agents, die a true hero's death in issue No. 7 and Marvel allowed Zemo, an old Nazi villain, to be well and truly killed. The latter event did not deter another Nazi fiend from appearing in Zemo disguise and threatening Captain America. No fan would seriously believe that Dr Xavier of X-Men was really dead, and sure enough, three years later he re-emerged.

Each super-hero has 'pro bono contra malum' invisibly stamped on his forehead and can, therefore, never be defeated. No wonder that under such a scheme the super-villains are often drawn much more interestingly and hold more fascination for the reader than the hero himself. Just as super-heroes, super-villains too usually acquire their super-gifts through some accident; but when they realize their new potentialities, their warped brains think only of the advantages they can gain for themselves, the power they will be able to wield over their fellow beings, the damage they can inflict on society in revenge for some injustice they suffered in the past.

Lex Luthor, Superman's arch enemy, enjoyed experimenting with chemicals in his youth. Carelessly released vapours robbed him of every hair on his head. It had been Lex's own fault, but he blamed Superboy who had wanted to rescue him—taking the vapour clouds for the smoke of a fire—for the accident and his ensuing baldness. Luthor convinced himself that Superboy was envious of his scientific genius, broke off their friendship and decided henceforth to use his powers in the furtherance of crime.

An important part in the Superman saga is also played by Brainiac, a green-faced computer in human shape, largely immune against Superman's attacks. Brainiac's particular hobby was to scale down whole towns, including inhabitants, to minute size and add them to his growing collection; but when he started on terrestrial towns Superman managed at last to stop this fiendish pastime. He successfully returned towns and inhabitants to their normal size, only one town he could not help: Kandor, a town which his green adversary had popped into one of his bottles, just before the final destruction of the planet Krypton. Brainiac's bottle was filled with an atmosphere which permitted the inhabitants to survive. Since then Kandor—in its bottle—stands in Superman's fortress. Sometimes a group of mini-super-heroes issues from the bottle, to aid Superman in particularly tricky cases. This town is, by the way, the town of Supergirl's parents and they still live there—in reduced circumstances.

Another super-villain who was given a fiend's appearance by a chemical reaction is Batman's adversary, The Joker. His hair turned green, his face white and his lips blood red. At first he was one of those particularly sinister fiends who torture their victims just for the fun of it; but gradually he became the real 'joker' of the world of crime, who commits his villainies for the sole reason of annoying Batman.

The best and most effective villains personify the greatness in evil; they are lonely, tragic figures, demanding our pity. Their crimes are committed out of a desire for revenge, a feeling of bitterness, for they are denied the ordinary human emotions—soulless, despairing creatures. Frankenstein was made of such stuff, and also Marvel's Dr Doom, a super-villain so popular with readers that he became the first evil character to be title-hero of his own series of stories.

Dr Doom, dictator of Latveria, has the greatness as well as the loneliness of Shakespeare's Richard III, and resembles him in more than just an unprepossessing appearance. He is absolute master over his realm. Human beings are no more to him than figures on a chessboard, and he pushes them around as he pleases. He is also a scientific genius—just like his adversary, Mr Fantastic (Reed Richards).

Another highly successful Marvel villain is The Red Skull, the man with the red death's-head mask. He was originally created by Hitler to do his bidding, but gradually became the power behind Hitler's throne, and is now the personification of dictatorship, world-domination and enslavement of mankind. His driving motive is blind hatred against Captain America who for over thirty long years has thwarted his wishes, humiliated him, beaten him in countless battles and repeatedly seemingly killed him; but Red Skull always rises like a phoenix out of the ashes to make another attempt at bringing Hitler's heritage to the USA.

Apart from the great ones there are the smaller evil-doers who have attained some sort of super-faculty through long, painstaking efforts. They are no less inventive in brewing trouble and confront lesser heroes, like Flash; but their super-villainies never succeed in amassing the fortunes for which they pine and the tailors who fashion their costumes never receive payment for their bills.

BRAIN VERSUS BRAWN

Some critics see in the super-heroes' fights a simple brain versus brawn theme which labels the intellectual as negative and inferior.

Super-hero wars are always fought for the highest possible stake: 'Shall earth survive?' It is only logical to give the super-heroes enemies with the most advanced technical know-how and the scientific means to blow earth right out of the universe. Only mad scientists have this particular know-how in comics, and so a simple, straightforward analogy with reality exists. (The comics' atom bomb appeared long before the real one.) The American archetype of the 'tinkerer' of the Edison brand became the Mad Scientist who dabbles in world destruction as a scientific experiment.

In the cruder stories of the Golden Age, when mad scientists and thinkers most often worked for the Nazis (rumours of German 'wonder weapons' abounded), they were usually portrayed as small, misshapen men with large 'egg' heads. Later designs were subtler and much more inventive. Brainiac, Lex Luthor and Marvel's aptly-named Mad Thinker are not displeasing to look at and are rather tragic characters. Super-heroes, however, need enemies they can tackle physically and so mad scientists generally work via robots or other artificially created beings. The Frankenstein theme is endlessly varied and modified.

A repeated show of primitive physical strength and superiority on the part of super-heroes would be boring in the long run, and Superman therefore functions in many a story as super-sleuth. In such cases he becomes a véritable Sherlock Holmes, and Batman too has to make good use of his grey matter when he tries to unravel the mysteries left behind by the Riddler. Batman's super-detective adventures in Detective Comics are well worth reading. On the whole it is intelligence rather than crude strength that wins the final super-hero victory.

Jeffrey S. Lang and Patrick Trimble

SOURCE: "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? An Examination of the American Monomyth and the Comic Book Superhero," in Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 22, No. 3, Winter, 1988, pp. 157-73.

[In the following article, Lang and Trimble trace the tendency towards demythologizing comic book superheroes in American popular culture.]

It happened just a short time ago, the summer of 1986. DC Comics, the publisher of the Superman family of comics, turned 50 years old and, to celebrate, decided to do some housecleaning. They cleared away the dead wood: Green Lantern, the Flash, Hawkman, Hourman, Sandman and many other heroes from what is now called the Golden Age of Comics, the years 1938 to 1946.

Many of these characters were laid to rest without much fuss or bother. They had long ago passed from the public's notice, their gold tarnished. Underneath there was only lead. Or, in the case of Superman, only steel.

Superman is dead.

Of course, he didn't stay dead. He was resurrected in a new title. In July 1986, you could have gone down to your local newsstand and bought a copy of Superman volume 2, number 1. If you stuck it in a plastic bag and stored it away, maybe it'll be worth something in another 50 years. It sold more than 400,000 copies, which by today's standards is very impressive. Superman just brushed himself off, slicked back that damned forelock and launched himself into the sun. Everybody agreed he looked pretty spry for a 50-year-old.

But it wasn't the same Superman. This one was referred to as the Man of Steel. Of course, they always called him that, but there was another name he used to go by, one you don't hear very often anymore.

Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?

PART I: THE CLASSICAL MONOMYTH AND THE AMERICAN MONOMYTH

The myths of the Greeks and Romans, the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, even the tales of Christ in the Bible—all of these are part of popular culture, mythology. They give the culture form and identity. Richard Slotkin describes mythology as

… a complex of narratives that dramatizes the world vision and historical sense of a people or culture, reducing centuries of experience into a constellation of compelling metaphors … Myth provides a scenario or prescription for action, defining and limiting the possibilities for human response to the universe.

[Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier.]

A monomyth is "a myth occurring cross-culturally." As Billie Wahlstrom and Carol Deming describe it in their article "Chasing the Popular Arts Through The Critical Trees":

Some patterns of events and figures persist in myths around the world and over time. The similarities in the expression of these myths occur because they represent human behavior and embody human behavioral patterns towards which humans seem to be disposed.

In the classical monomyth,

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won. The hero comes back from the mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men.

[Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.]

Examples would include the Herakles myths of the Greeks, the tales of Lancelot and Tristan, the fairy and folk tales of hundreds of cultures, and, most especially, the Odyssey.

Contrast this with what Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence describe as the American monomyth:

A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil. Normal institutions fail to contend with this threat. A selfless hero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task, and, aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisal condition. The superhero then recedes into obscurity.

[Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, The American Monomyth.]

The difference between the two is the difference between rites of initiation (the classical monomyth) and tales of redemption (the American monomyth). The American monomyth secularizes Judeo-Christian ideals by combining the selfless individual who sacrifices himself for others and the zealous crusader who destroys evil. This supersavior replaces the Christ figure whose credibility has been eroded by scientific rationalism, but at the same time reflects a hope of divinity and redemption that science has never been able to eradicate. If we take these two concepts, the awareness that a culture needs heroic mythology to provide a scenario or prescription for action and the idea that the American monomyth is an embellishment on the classical monomyth, it is logical to assume the American monomythic hero is different from the heroes of other cultures.

Daniel Walden writes that cultures choose heroes as an indication of their national character. As a relatively new society, America created monomythic heroes that best personified the way Americans wished to see themselves—youthful, physically vigorous, morally upright, a people capable of existing in the melting pot of American technological society without sacrificing an individual sense of value. Conflict was a major part of that figure's life. As a frontier nation, the idea of struggle was inbred into the American monomyth; the hero's struggle was one of vertical mobility, raising himself from humble beginnings until he had forced society to recognize him as a successful individual. The rise from the masses into the light of individual success became the beacon for others to follow.

While the earliest monomythic heroes were usually politicians like Washington or scientist-statesmen like Franklin, the rise of technology and growing corporatism changed the shape of the American hero. Intuition and instinct replaced reason as the physical hands-on experience of the hero became central. Figures like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were revered not so much as thinkers as individuals struggling with the physical limitations of science and mechanization, their sleeves rolled up, confronting a difficulty that sat immediately before them. Such images emphasize the physical involvement of the monomythic hero in the process of problem solving. We remember Teddy Roosevelt less as a politician than as a larger-than-life figure leading the charge up San Juan Hill.

During the twentieth-century, as America became even more technological, the hero came to represent the needs of the masses. While rich industrialists were lionized, the real monomythic heroes came from the lower classes or the great American mid-west. Charles Lindbergh and Babe Ruth are almost anti-intellectual in their simplicity and appeal. Both relied on instincts, something the average American, grown fearful of rationalism and technology, could identify with. They achieved their greatness through their own physical actions and by depending on an inherent native wit. The message was clear: as Americans, everyone has these innate characteristics and can also achieve social success.

The cultural catastrophe of the 1930s changed the shape one more time. America, in the midst of the Great Depression, became aware of the fragility of monomythic illusion. War threatened Europe, breadlines of middle class businessmen filled the newsreels, and, more important, heroes of the day proved to be all too human. Corporate leaders and politicians became mistrusted; Babe Ruth, heavy and old, left the sport that made him famous. Lindbergh, already victimized by the kidnapping and murder of his son in 1932, fell from grace because of unpopular views about isolationism and Nazi Germany. Real-life heroes proved too fragile to meet the responsibilities of a true American monomythic superhero.

PART II: THE EMERGENCE OF THE AMERICAN MONOMYTHIC SUPERHERO

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were 18 years old in 1933, the year they first conceived of Superman. Growing up in one of the most difficult periods in American history, perhaps, to them, the only means of finding the promised American dream was through the intervention of a super-powered strongman.

Superman is the purest example of the twentieth century American monomythic superhero.

… distinguished by disguised origins, pure motivations, a redemptive task, and extraordinary powers. He originates outside the community he is called to save, and in those exceptional instances when he is a resident therein, the superhero plays the role of the idealistic loner. His identity is secret, either by virtue of his unknown origins or his alter ego, his motivations a selfless zeal for justice.

[Jewett and Lawrence]

Superman is from the distant Krypton, and is motivated by an abstract concern for justice and fair play that transcends nationalistic or religious boundaries. While the most powerful man on Earth, he hides his powers in the guise of Clark Kent to better commune with human beings. He is the benevolent watchdog of the society, and even as Clark Kent, he takes the role of the outside observer, a journalist.

Superman's mission, as every child knows, is to fight for "truth, justice and the American way." Superman was therefore the embodiment of all the values that Americans cherished in the 1930s. For Superman, truth was not an abstract concept but the blueprint for action. Superman never lies. He represents individual dignity and moral integrity while believing in justice for all, rich and poor, strong and weak. The ultimate egalitarian, Superman is fair to everyone in equal measure; he finds the means to give to the poor without taking from the rich. He does not compromise because his moral strength does not require compromise. He upholds the values of the law and the establishment while representing the best of personal freedom and anti-establishment feeling. Superman rises above the law. When he smashes into a criminal's lair, no search warrant is needed.

Superman demonstrates that power and humility can exist in one form. When Superman is not needed, he hides himself away in the weak, mild-mannered form of Clark Kent—a man who, to our eyes, is not only average but is humble about his averageness. Superman's mission is not to punish the wicked but to save the innocent. He does not represent the American legal system, but a secularized version of New Testament justice. He personalizes the values of the Puritan work ethic in its most virtuous form.

Superman's past is the past of all our forefathers: he is an alien, a castaway. Superman comes from Krypton, a planet doomed to destruction because an arthritic, repressive society refused to accept bald-faced reality. He is taken in by a kindly, mid-western couple, the Kents, who teach him all the basic American virtues. As farmers, the Kents are responsible for Superman learning the agrarian values of the American heartland. Through them, he understands the need for humility and the value of hard labor. They teach him the importance of selflessness and that a good deed is its own reward. The Kents shape Superman into the embodiment of the rugged individualist while also teaching him the powers of the individual when acting in concert with the will of the masses. Superman redeems the dreams of the common man where religion and politics have failed. Both figuratively and literally, Superman can fly. Thus, he transcends the petty political illusions of statehood and shows us all how wide the sky can be.

The thirties were a period of trial, and many of us had lost our old faith in the traditional virtues. War imminent in Europe, Hitler seemed the personification of evil with unlimited power. Superman may have been partly a wish fulfillment: hesitant to accept battle with the evil loose in the world, parents quietly approved the presence of the fictional strongman who would have been a comfort had he existed.

[Jewett and Lawrence]

Superman's first adventure was published in 1938. Hitler had by then begun his march across Europe, and Americans were trying to convince themselves that it was not their fight. Too many had died in the last World War—the Depression had taken too great a toll. The lesson was bitter. Evil, we had learned, was not just an abstract concept. And it did not lurk only across the wide Atlantic: evil could exist wherever there was a desperate need to survive. In 1938, Americans realized that good people could die because other good people had lost the capacity to feel empathy for suffering. Though things were beginning to improve economically, the shadow of the Depression still sat like a malevolent blackbird on everyone's doorstep. Everyone still felt vulnerable, and needed something bright and fearless to chase the blackbird away.

Superman was created to shore up the sagging spirits of a country that had lost its innocence in the Great Depression. Superman did not turn his back on the poor and disenfranchised. In early issues of Action Comics and Superman, he saved victims in the Tennessee flood valleys, helped families in the Oklahoma dust bowl and, even as late as 1948, he helped city dwellers by rebuilding slums for the poor. He was everywhere at once, a godlike redeemer, but he didn't ask for worship and redemption only cost a dime.

It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the myth of Superman on the American psyche. Les Daniels comments, "Superman, the ultimate expression of human aspiration to pure power and freedom, was an instant triumph, a concept so intense and so instantly identifiable that he became perhaps the most widely known figure ever created in American fiction."

Circulation figures showed the sales of Action Comics and Superman comics eclipsing those of almost every other comic magazine on the stands. In 1939, the character appeared in syndicated comic strips, in the early 1940s, on radio and in a series of Max Fleisher cartoons. Random House even published a hardback edition of the Superman legend in 1942, so popular was the character's appeal. Other companies imitated the Superman formula, some successfully, others less so. In the words of Jules Feiffer, soon there were so many superheroes that had they all existed together on the same planet, "they would have blackened the skies."

Jewett and Lawrence recognize the decade between 1929 and 1939 as the period when most of the conventions of the American monomythic hero emerged. The presence of Superman dictated a change in the concept, from hero to superhero, offering readers a figure more magnificent than any real-life hero could possibly be. Two conditions were necessary to complete the metamorphosis: the superhero had few personal relationships and no sexual contact with mortals (a convention easily accepted since superhero comics were generally sold to pre-teens). The superhero could have no distractions from the responsibilities of saving the world, and such an emotional distance allowed the superhero to maintain an almost superhuman sense of objectivity. The second condition, serialization, began as a method of merchandising the adventures of a particular superhero. Sexual renunciation and serialization made it possible for the superhero to move from adventure to adventure without the restrictions of normal social relationships. These innovations became the basic plot pattern that comic book writers would exploit for almost 50 years; unfortunately, this foundation also created a formalized structure with which more innovative writers found difficult to dispense.

The list of heroes includes the Lone Ranger, the Shadow, Batman, Doc Savage, the Flash, Green Lantern, Plastic Man and many more. As a culture, we have outgrown some of these figures and no longer find anything in the details of their myths that reassure or instruct us; and yet occasionally, old myths are brushed off and refolded into the needs of modern society. Why some and not others? Why has the Batman continued to exist to this day and not the Shadow? What is there about Superman that remains interesting while Captain Marvel has faded away? And what about Captain America?

PART III: THE POLITICIZED SUPERHERO

Captain America was created in 1941, only three years after Superman made his first appearance. At first glance, we see many superficial similarities between the two characters, but there are many more significant differences. Captain America fits much of the pattern for the monomythic superhero: he has disguised origins and exceptional powers; his identity is secret and he frequently plays the role of the idealistic loner. The single item on the superhero agenda that separates Superman from Captain America is that Superman is motivated by a higher calling—abstract idealism—while Captain America was created specifically to fight one particular threat: the Nazis.

Captain America was a government agent, created during the war years to bash Nazis. Where Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent, served a "philosophical" purpose, Captain America's secret identity, Steve Rogers, was a mere plot device. Superman, in his godlike invulnerability, was difficult to identify with, while Clark Kent was a 90-pound weakling—in other words, Everyman. Captain America wasn't as powerful or as godlike as Superman. His powers were given to him through the intervention of science and American know-how. Steve Rogers happened to be at the right place at the right time when he was chosen to be the first subject of the "Super Soldier" experiment. Private Rogers existed as a method to get Cap to and from the field of battle. Initially one might question the wisdom of having a nation's finest soldier disguise himself as a common infantryman. However, one must realize that Captain America, at bottom, was a propaganda device. The message was that inside every private lay the potential for a Captain America.

The origin of Captain America is a commentary on how the feelings of the American people had changed in a brief time. In 1938, the only possible savior had to come from outside society. In 1941, not only did the savior come from inside society but, because of the nature of the Super Soldier formula, he could have been just about anyone. The American mood had changed from despair to can-do zeal in less than five years. Unfortunately, Captain America's limitations as a hero were built into his origins.

When the war ended, so did Captain America. His publisher, Timely Comics, kept him around for a few years more, trying to fit him into a mystery/horror format, but sales dropped precipitously. The reason Cap failed after the end of the war seems to be that his audience could not accept him in non-political situations. Contrast this with Superman and many of the other National Periodical Publications characters who did not fight in Europe. Superman, less firmly rooted in reality, did not suffer as great a loss in popularity when the temper of the times changed. The Timely comics were more … well, timely. Limited by their topicality, sales for the entire line plummeted. Superheroes all but disappeared from the racks.

Other superheroes, Captain America among them, were locked too firmly into a formula of the traditional American monomyth. One of the side effects of the war years was that Americans in general became more sophisticated. Soldiers returned to their homes, many to stay, but they had seen the world. Women had been allowed, however briefly, to leave their traditional roles as housewives and would never again be satisfied with the limitations of the old days. The children of these men and women would not be able to identify with Captain America as a single-minded fighting machine devoted solely to the destruction of a fascist state. There were no more Nazis, only Commies, and though Cap took a lick at them too, somehow it wasn't the same. Nazis wore hobnailed boots and helmets. Communists weren't quite so easy to spot. That was what was so frightening: you couldn't tell them from the good guys. Sending Captain America after the Communists was like using a sledgehammer to cut out a tumor—not only was it ineffective, it also made a mess. Superheroes in general were pretty useless in the 1950s unless they were fighting monsters from outer space, and there were only so many of those to go around.

American comic book companies had no heroes left—at least, no convincing heroes. They began instead to tell stories about the villains, who somehow never changed. The most popular comics genres in the 1950s were horror and crime stories. They dominated the medium with titles like Crime and Punishment and Crime Does Not Pay. Such comics described the deeds of the lowlifes and misfits of the society, perhaps because, at the time, the standards of what was considered socially acceptable behavior were so strict. In their secret hearts, everyone in the 1950s was an outlaw.

When concerned parents and issue-hungry politicians became aware of the violent and suggestive contents of these comics, the result was a campaign that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. This organization's charter proudly proclaimed that it had adopted "the most stringent code in existence for any communications medium." The Comics Code almost proved to be comics' death knell. With the standards the Code enforced, there was very little comics publishers could present that appealed to the prurient interests of what they assumed to be their major audience: 12-year-old boys. In this atmosphere, publishers quickly discovered that superheroes—with their black-and-white depictions of moral values and their antiseptic violence—once again would sell.

Of course, awareness of an opportunity and the ability to do something about it are two different things. National (which later became DC Comics), the publishers of both Superman and Batman, had a corral of superhero characters left over from the '30s and '40s. National began to produce updated versions of the Flash, the Green Lantern, the Hawkman and others. Whereas their predecessors had been rooted in a sort of mysticism (superheroes were called "mystery men" in the 1930s), the new superheroes all were products of advanced super-science. The new Flash gained his powers through a fortunate accident (chemicals combined with a flash of lightning). The new Green Lantern was a member of an interplanetary peace-keeping organization. The new Hawkman actually was an alien sent to Earth to study our police techniques. (Apparently old broadcasts of Superman radio programs from the 1940s had reached his home planet.)

Though different in style from their predecessors, the Silver Age (1959 to 1980) comics characters were not so different in content. Older readers found many fond memories of former heroes in the new superhero titles, but the novelty quickly wore off. The problem was simple: superheroes were locked into the American monomythic formula. All the bells and whistles, new origins and alien monsters couldn't disguise the fact that the basic plot structure of superhero comics hadn't changed in 20 years.

PART IV: HUMANIZING THE SUPERHERO

Superheroes have continued to exist to the present day, mostly because of the intervention in the 1960s of Stan Lee, then editor-in-chief of the Marvel Comics Group, formerly known as Timely Comics.

Lee made superheroes flexible by giving them more human personalities. Where readers had come to expect archetypes with only one dimension, Lee insisted on giving his characters more complex personalities. Spider-Man was neurotically obsessed with status and worldly success. The members of the Fantastic Four, a nontraditional but recognizable family unit, spent almost as much time squabbling among themselves as they did confronting bad guys. The Incredible Hulk was really Bruce Banner, a meek nuclear scientist transformed into a brutal behemoth by a gamma ray bomb. All of these characters were the kind of heroes America seemed to need: readers could admire them but, more importantly, readers could identify with their human frailties.

We have, in effect, rejected the old, infantile superhero—who represents the strong father who will rescue us (as individuals, who are weak and powerless, and as a society in general) and have accepted responsibility for ourselves and the social order … The comics generally show a new conception of the relationship between individuals and society. The old idea of the self-reliant "individualistic" hero who can do everything on his own, with no help from anyone else—who can save the world because he is a Superman, for example, has been replaced by a view which sees everything as interrelated and everyone's fate being related to the fate of everyone else. it is a much more complex view of man and society than we found in the "caped crusader" comics of the forties and fifties.

Arthur Berger's analysis, while correct in its essence, ignores the fact that the Marvel superheroes generally still resolved a situation in the quaint, old "individualistic" method of beating the living crap out of the bad guys. This much is held over from the American mono-myth elements found in Superman. Richard Slotkin calls it the myth of regeneration through violence. It originated in Puritan colonists' tales of Indian wars. Through killing the pagan Indians, the colonists made the frontier safer for virtuous white Christians. Slotkin's myth "depicted violence as the means both of cleansing the wilderness and regenerating true faith in the believing community." Regeneration through violence suggests a world view in which the most powerful or most clever members of the community are also the most moral. The superhero formula thus becomes only a logical extension of this idea brought into the present.

Slotkin's account implies, however, that the hero can originate within the community and may re-enter it after the completion of the violent act. The American monomyth posits a superhero who must remain separate from the community in order to remain pure. The new mythology, the Marvel mythology, suggests a compromise between the two scenarios. In this new myth, the hero is often alienated from the community, fearsome, misshapen, or sometimes only misunderstood, yet still seeks community approval. The superhero seeks to re-enter society through the completion of some violent act that the rest of society is incapable of performing (as in the American monomyth), but also finds abhorrent. In the new myth, the redeemed society does not recognize the redeemer as a hero but instead frequently thinks of him as a menace. He is freakish, different, outside society—and therefore dangerous.

For example, Spider-Man must defeat Doctor Octopus when Doc Ock threatens the order of the society. But Spider-Man does not want to fight, and even tells this to the villain. Frequently Spider-Man wishes that someone else would assume the responsibility of being society's protector, and talks about giving up the superhero role. However, his alter ego, Peter Parker, recognizes his social responsibility. This was driven home to him rather poignantly when an indiscretion on his part as a novice superhero led to his uncle's death. Spider-Man's motto became "With great power comes great responsibility." But as long as he continues to accept his role as a superhero, he will remain outside society. He will always want to be accepted, but knows he cannot unless he renounces his Spider-Man identity, something he feels he cannot do and remain true to his uncle's memory. His dead uncle represents an era gone by in which a hero obeyed a moral code and, even though Spider-Man may not recognize it as such, the code is that of the American monomythic superhero.

This new wrinkle—the superhero's awareness of his place (or lack of it) in society—is one of the few things that has changed about superhero comics in the history of the genre. The new heroes feel ambivalence toward society and their place in it. Not coincidentally, these heroes began to emerge in the early 1960s, an era when many Americans began to entertain serious doubts about the viability of using old methods to solve new, more complex problems. It was an era that promoted self-doubt. Even Captain America—that venerable old warhorse—was brought back and given a healthy dose of angst. He agonized over the death of his young partner, Bucky, who had been killed for a particularly useless reason at the conclusion of World War II. It was a brave statement to make: that young men could be killed for foolish reasons in war. But once again it proved that Captain America is best used as a propaganda tool. This time, however, he was being used against the Establishment.

The American monomyth has never, and probably will never, completely disappear from superhero comic books. For any comic book superhero, from 1939 to 1980, the formula works. Superman is still Clark Kent, and Clark Kent is still a wimp, even though he is a television news anchorman instead of a newspaper reporter. The Fantastic Four still live apart from the rest of society in their skyscraper apartment building and regularly fly off to fight Doctor Doom—although sometimes they have to go to a tenants' meeting first. Small alterations have been made to keep the attention of a public that has become more and more sophisticated. As the years have passed, however, and as the education and cynicism of the average reader has become greater, it has become more and more difficult to reach the desired state of suspended disbelief. Details—such as Spider-Man needing to sew himself a new costume, or the Hulk's alter ego, Bruce Banner, pinning traveler's checks inside his pants' waistband so he won't find himself penniless upon waking up from a rampage—make the fantasies more palatable.

PART V: THE DEMYTHIFICATION OF THE SUPERHERO

The process of having superhero characters lose their mythic stature could be described as progressive demythification. The comic book companies' original goal was to make the hero seem fallible so that when he performed an heroic act, the reader would be all the more impressed. This gives the writer greater flexibility in what he may write and the reader more interesting things to read about. Tales of Superman saving the city quickly become boring when there is no sense of peril, no chance he might fail. New elements must be introduced: kryptonite, time travel, Lois Lane—anything that will make the plot more complex. Can Superman save the city and find Lois a birthday present? The step from myth to soap opera is a short one, easily made when the comics writer is consistently forced to be interesting in the face of deadline pressure. The more rigid the symbolic character, the more formula it must rely on. Human frailties soften the formula and give it more flexibility. Deviations from the norm start to become more preferable because they are less predictable.

Captain America, the star-spangled superhero from the hallowed halls of Marveldom, has undergone a metamorphosis that parallels America's movement from the super-patriotic Forties to the disillusioned present. His development is significant not simply for its reflection of emerging American values, but also as an object lesson in the way America's rapid change swallows up its cultural heroes, allowing the out-dated to fall by the wayside, while tolerating only the most flexible in a curious type of Darwinian selection.

[Steve Englehart, Captain America]

The demythification process, once begun, is difficult if not impossible to reverse. If Captain American becomes the conscience of the nation rather than its defender, how should he be expected to react when he discovers the heart of the nation has become less than pure? How can a symbol of idealistic patriotism be expected to react when it comes face to face with tawdry reality?

The tale referred to is a Captain American story from the mid-1970s in which Cap uncovers a Watergate-style conspiracy in the upper levels of the American government and is reduced to watching impotently while the conspiracy's leader (Richard Nixon, by implication) shoots himself. Much of the story could be viewed as allegorical, Cap's anguish being representative of the entire nation's. It was a turning point for the character, and for a time he quit his role as Captain America. He took up the identity of Nomad, a man without a country. Eventually, he returned to being Captain America, but only after having gone through an extended period of soul-searching. He decided the value of having a symbolic persona such as Captain America is in its representation of all the people—which cannot be thwarted by the small-mindedness of petty individuals.

Steve Rogers, the individual, resubmerged his own personality into the mythic identity of Captain America. Rogers sacrificed himself, and by so doing, gave the myth greater impact by making it clear to the reader that the mythic stature of the hero had grown out of a genuine human conflict.

Whatever the validity of Marvel's symbol of American patriotism, it is certainly consistent with the larger trends of American intellectual thought. Captain America moves from an almost rural simplicity to an urban complexity; from a simplistic faith in the Melting Pot to nagging doubts that a metaphor can perform its alchemy and become reality; from a morality play naivete in which good battles evil to a questioning of the very terms.

It may not come as a surprise to learn that current issues of Captain America feature a storyline in which Cap is forced to quit his role as the nation's defender after refusing to do covert work for the National Security Council that he feels is not morally proper.

Captain America's heroic persona changed as the culture's needs and expectations of a hero changed. The level of complexity of the hero's character, his moral viewpoint, is altered as the society alters. But as the society becomes better educated and more aware of ambiguities, the mythic character must reflect the awareness of those ambiguities in some way. The hero must act, but he must also reflect a complex society's anxiety about direct action. Society's representative must agonize, and through that agony, our collective guilt over our lack of action is purged. We see the results of the action and are seduced into believing that someone else is more capable of effecting social change that we are.

When describing this process, Jewett and Lawrence refer to Ernest Becker's concept of the Demonic. The Demonic, Becker states, "… comes into being when men fail to act individually, and willfully, on the basis of their own personal responsible powers." The renunciation of personal responsibility is seen by Jewett and Lawrence as an inevitable consequence of the embracing of the American monomyth. They fear it compels individuals to believe that there will always be someone better, stronger, somehow more capable of handling any given situation.

Without denying that democracy often fails to live according to its own heritage, one can clearly see that the monomyth betrays deep antagonism towards the creative exercise of reason on the part of the public as well as the individual. In the exercise of redemptive power, purity of intention sufficies. Heroes are either static, innately possessing all the wisdom they need, or they learn all they require from a single incident.

[Jewett and Lawrence]

It is possible that Jewett and Lawrence have overlooked the socializing of superheroes in the 1960s and their consequent humanizing and demythification. They have, in essence, tailored their evidence to ignore characters like Spider-Man who feel great anguish about assuming responsibility for the mass of society.

From 1962 to 1967, Spider-Man mirrored an era still dominated by Cold War diplomacy and a citizenry more concerned with personal gratification than public service. During the late sixties and seventies, Spider-Man helped to keep alive the liberal tradition among the young, a tradition stressing cooperation among individuals and minorities rather than conflict, moderation in politics rather than conflict, and the right of each American to social recognition and economic opportunity.

By trying to create a formula that would encompass all monomythic superheroes, Jewett and Lawrence have missed understanding the true importance of the American monomyth. And that is: as the culture has grown and changed, the myth has changed. Americans have become more cynical and narcissistic and, perhaps, more mature.

To quote Salvatore Mondello, "Superman came to us in a period of consensus; Spider-Man had to find consensus in an era of conflict." This is the key. Different social pressures on a nation create the need for different types of heroes. The American monomythic character described by Jewett and Lawrence is the prototype for many of our pop-culture heroes, particularly superheroes, but often it is only that: the prototype,

Jewett and Lawrence state:

… Heroes were necessary both as gods and as part of the ritual that kept the external world secure and tolerable. But epic heroes such as these essentially belong to rural worlds, to societies living near the wilderness. And no wonder then that they are dying, particularly in the Western world where nature has become benign.

[Jewett and Lawrence]

It is undeniably true that the concept of the epic hero grew out of the rural world, but to say that the hero is dying—and more, to say that his time has come to die—ignores the fact that evolution is possible and even desirable. Jewett and Lawrence feel that the American monomyth is dangerous and hopelessly beyond repair. They ignore the good the myth may have created and the ideas that it may have inspired. And while it may be true that the American monomythic superhero discourages individual initiative, it is equally true that it creates admirable role models.

All of this aside, Jewett and Lawrence also fail to acknowledge that they may have witnessed an evolution of the comic book superhero. Possibly they just didn't look long enough; the process only became clear relatively recently. They may have missed the chance to see the monomyth rendered less susceptible to conjuring the Demonic. They might not have seen what was happening to the Man of Tomorrow.

Most people, including DC's editors, think poor sales killed him. There has been a noticeable and steady decline in interest in Superman since the mid-1960s. As long ago as 1970, the editors of Superman knew that there was something wrong. "Superman was created in the Depression as an icon," said then-editorial director Carmine Infantino. "At that time, they needed a perfect being. But now they want someone they can relate to. Like kids today, Superman will suffer from an inability to belong." Unfortunately, the few changes made in 1970 couldn't stop the perhaps inevitable loss of readership. It's hard to identify with a man who can do anything. It's even harder to feel any sympathy for his alter ego, the wimp, when we know he doesn't have to suffer. The original idea of Clark Kent was to bring Superman down to a human level. Unfortunately, the 40 years of plot embellishments made him less than human, beneath contempt. In a way, they nearly sank the man who could fly. So, in its 50th anniversary housecleaning, DC changed everything.

First, Superman's home planet, Krypton, is no longer said to have been destroyed because of a shortsighted, repressive government. Instead, it was doomed, as Su-perman's natural father now explains, because of a sterility, a decay that set into a society that had stagnated for too long. Superman's mother boasts of how they can control the rainfall and fears the world to which her husband intends to send their son because the men are hairy and their skins touch the air.

Mostly, though, the editors changed Superman by changing Clark Kent. He's still a reporter, but no longer simply mild-mannered. If anything, he's the epitome of virility: he lifts weights. Women find him attractive—even Lois Lane does, though she would never say so to his face. Clark Kent is no longer an isolated, idealistic loner. He is a member of society, who thinks and feels as a human being does. He does not learn he is an alien until early adulthood (no more Superboy), and when he finds out, he is somewhat perturbed by the idea. Eventually, however, Superman decides that as long as he is accepted as a human being, there is no reason for anyone, including himself, to think of him as anything else.

Furthermore, Superman is no longer portrayed as all-powerful. He can't push planets out of orbit, fly faster than the speed of light and see all the way around the world. To survive in the upper reaches of the atmosphere or dive beneath the waves, he has to hold his breath. He isn't as forgiving or as just either. He grows angry enough at a small Middle Eastern nation that sponsors terrorism to fly into the capital city and destroy any and all munitions he finds there. This isn't a Christ-like redeemer.

The most important change in the new Superman, though, is that his adoptive parents are still alive. In the original myth, the Kents were killed rather quickly and unceremoniously off-panel. The implication was the Superman had learned everything there was to know from them. In Superman volume two, the Kents are still Superman's moral center, and they're still preaching small-town American values. But their ideas—and consequently Superman's—aren't chiselled into their gravestones. They still grow and change. They give Clark advice on how to cope with his role as hero, reassuring him that his deeds are worthwhile. There is an incident when Superman is mobbed after saving an airplane. He is stunned by it, and leaves the scene feeling very cynical:

And it was all demands! Everyone had something they wanted me to do, to say, to sell. They'd taken everything you've taught me and ripped it apart. I know I have to use my powers to help people who really need me, but now they're going to be expecting me. And I just don't know if I can deal with it.

[John Byrne, The Man of Steel]

This isn't the American monomythic superhero talking. He is a less self-possessed being. Distinctions between right and wrong aren't so clear-cut. There are ambiguities everywhere, and, as all of us must, Superman now acknowledges them and tries to deal with them. Certainly there's still the requisite amount of mayhem and violence. The bad guy still gets punched out in the end, but that's not the point.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that, as Am-erica and Americans have learned and matured, their conception of what a hero must be and their choice for a being who reflects their values and ideals have changed. The Man of Tomorrow, the all-purpose hero, is dead.