I Believe a Man Can Fly: Three Essays on the Themes of Superheroes
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Ouachita Baptist University Scholarly Commons @ Ouachita Honors Theses Carl Goodson Honors Program 4-16-2021 I Believe a Man Can Fly: Three Essays on the Themes of Superheroes Trayton N. Armstrong Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/honors_theses Part of the English Language and Literature Commons I Believe a Man Can Fly: Three Essays on the Themes of Superheroes Tray Armstrong Ouachita Baptist University Armstrong 1 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Amy Sonheim for her patient, unwavering guidance throughout the entire thesis process. Without you, there would not be any flourish in this project. Thanks to the amazing Bugtruck students, faculty, and staff over the past three years for their toleration of my superheroic rambles. Our discussions are the backbone of these essays, and I hope to have many more. Finally, a huge thank you to the Carl Goodson Honors Program and the committee over the Tiger Research Grant for awarding me two grants to pursue this project with every possible resource. Armstrong 2 Table of Contents Introduction: Origin Story ............................................................................................................3 Superman: The Hero in All of Us ................................................................................................5 Batman: Redemption of Tragedy ..............................................................................................23 Spider-Man: Power and Responsibility ....................................................................................40 Conclusion: When Heroes Unite ................................................................................................55 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................59 Comic Sources ..................................................................................................................59 Electronic Media Sources .................................................................................................62 Secondary Sources ............................................................................................................67 Cover Image Sources ........................................................................................................68 Armstrong 3 Introduction: Origin Story Since the late 1930s in American pop culture, superheroes have been a staple. From comic books to toys to film franchises, superheroes appear in almost any and every medium. From aliens to superhumans to sorcerers to soldiers, superheroes can be anything or anyone. Yet, throughout the entire course of superhero literature, there are some consistent themes that constantly recur. These constant themes can be difficult to see for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty of obtaining comic book storylines. Because many superhero stories are told through the medium of weekly comics as opposed to novels, graphic novels, or movies, all of which either contain complete stories between their beginning and end, it can be difficult to obtain a full run of a story or narrative, particularly if that narrative is divided across multiple titles. While there are plenty of books that give background on superhero stories,1 few of them trace themes from the larger genre of comic book heroes. For that reason, this thesis project aims to identify some of these themes presented across the narrative of the three most popular and recognized superheroes: Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man. Superman, the iconic and archetypal hero, often deals with the pressures of being a hero and what that means in a modern context. Batman, on the other hand, tends to delve into trauma and what that means to move forward through that trauma. Spider-Man’s stories wear their message on their sleeves, discussing power and responsibility over and over again. While every theme presented in this thesis can be discussed through each of these characters (Superman is not the only hero whose stories touch on what heroism means), I have selected these specific examples because they have some of the strongest and most prolific 1 See, for example, Superman: The Complete History – The Life and Times of the Man of Steel (1998) by Les Daniels or Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and the American Book Revolution (2004) by Ronin Ro. Armstrong 4 narratives centered on these themes. This is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion of these themes within the superhero genre, simply a jumping off point for readers who wish to examine this facet of popular culture. I hope to be able to give some understanding to why superheroes are so popular, prolific, and vital to American culture as well as give a framework for understanding what conversations often occur within the superhero narrative. Armstrong 5 Superman: The Hero in All of Us When discussing superheroes, there is one character that comes to mind almost before the word leaves the mouth. Superman. He is the quintessential superhero. Born on a dying planet, the baby Kal-El is sent to Earth in a rocket ship. Adopted by kindly surrogate parents Jonathan and Martha Kent, the child, now named Clark Kent, develops fantastic powers. He can run faster than a locomotive, has the strength of a hundred men, and perhaps most impressively, he can fly. But none of this is enough to make a character 1: Superman, drawn by Dave Gibbons. (Moore & Swan, 2009) lasting in cultural consciousness. There are plenty of characters in literature and popular media who can perform incredible feats. In fact, during the Golden Age of comics, spanning the late 1930s to the early 1950s, there were a slew of “Superman clones” that shared some of his power- laden identity. The most serious copycat was Captain Marvel from Fawcett Comics, which DC managed to sue and prevent the publication of the character for years on end (Morrison 34). Yet, when someone mentions the term “superhero,” most people don’t think of the big red cheese that shouts “SHAZAM” to change back into his boyish counterpart. They don’t immediately think of Armstrong 6 the billionaire with a suit of advanced armor or the teenager bitten by a radioactive spider. People almost always go to the farm-boy from Kansas who can fly. Of course, this could be due to the similarity in the wording. Superman has a bit of a monopoly on the term superhero from a lexical perspective to be sure, but the reason for Superman’s proliferation in our modern media seems a bit deeper and more complex to me. Superman is not popular simply because he was the first superhero. Though there were costumed characters before him, Superman was the first to find such widespread popularity and schoolyard acclaim in defining the budding genre of superhero fiction. The most famous and recognizable of these prior superheroes was a character called the Phantom. The Phantom newspaper strip began in 1936, three years before Action Comics #1 and Superman’s debut. The character Phantom has appeared in a multitude of comic strips, television shows, and a live-action movie in 1996 (Sanderson). Superman, in his longevity of popularity, represents our vision for the type of hero we as a society want to be: powerful without overbearing, kind without being prideful, and wholly good. It will be helpful, at this point, to define what a superhero is before examining how Superman contributed and helped shape these definitions and how other characters have used his example in some way to help further define and qualify the term superhero. There are two parts to this definition. The “super” and the “hero.” Super is an adjective. It is defined in the Merriam- Webster Dictionary as “exhibiting the characteristics of its type to an extreme or excessive degree” (“Super”). For Superman’s first few appearances, this definition of “super” fit the characteristics of the hero. He was the “super-” man. “Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” (Superman 1940). The miracle superhero was little more than the physical extreme of human capabilities. Humans can run, but Superman can run faster than a bullet. Humans can be strong, but Superman can stop Armstrong 7 a train with his bare hands. Humans can leap about three feet, but Superman can leap over a thousand times that height. The original Superman (1939) had only the abilities of a demigod, a human taken to the unbelievable extreme, but nothing extra. It was only later, after more time and more creators began to write the character, that the fantastic powers began to manifest themselves. Nowadays, “super” in the context of superheroes often means something beyond human, though it can also debatably mean more technologically advanced within the context of superhero stories as well. Unaided, self-sustained flight, heat vision, and x-ray vision are some of Superman’s powers that were added later and have remained to this day. No human can fly or shoot lasers from their eyes, but Superman can. He is beyond human, and this is reflected in his origin. He explicitly is not human. He is Kryptonian, an alien from a destroyed planet that gets his power from our yellow sun, an aspect of our planet different from Krypton’s red star. Superman is not supposed to show us a physically perfect version of ourselves. He is the impossible ideal, the man who can do the impossible without struggling. “Super-” in comics has come to mean extraordinary, beyond