CLOSE VIEW 3 Special Report on Superheroes Manuscript: Keith Foster Producer: Keith Foster Broadcasting Date: 13/11, 2002 Length: 15’

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CLOSE VIEW 3 Special Report on Superheroes Manuscript: Keith Foster Producer: Keith Foster Broadcasting date: 13/11, 2002 Length: 15’

Music: from the movie Spiderman

Keith Foster: Welcome to Close View, and another special report. I’m Keith Foster. Well, that’s my public identity, anyway. But in my secret identity I’m really…well, actually I’m not going to tell you that.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to fly, or to be able to read minds, or to be strong enough to lift up a buss if you’d dropped your ticket under the wheel?

Most of us have dreamt about being able to do things we can’t – or that nobody can. In 1934 writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster puts their dreams on paper when they created Superman, first as a comic book, then a very successful newspaper cartoon. Superman could leap over skyscrapers (and here you have to do the voice properly), was more powerful than an express train and faster than a speeding bullet. They put him in brightly-coloured costume with a cape to show how fast he was moving. He was the first of what we now call super-heroes.

Others were soon created in Superman’s image but in 1939 the next ig step was a super-hero without super powers – The Batman. Although he was a brilliant athlete and fighter, Batman outsmarted the bad guys. He was a super detective. And the company that published Batman was DC or Detective Comics.

s time went on and writers came and went, the adventures of these two and other superheroes became a bit… silly. Superman had superboy and even a superdog. Batman became a figure of fun in a sixties TV series.

Batman: “Can Batman escape? One hint – the worst is yet to come! We’ll divide the loot and then we’ll fly our separate ways!” “Wrong Penguin! You’ll fly together. Up the river, you birds of a filthy feather!”

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KF: Then in the sixties along came a guy called Stan Lee of Marvel Comics. Tired of the old heroes, he created a wave of new characters: Spiderman, The Hulk, Daredevil, the X-Men. In fact forty years later, each of these characters has - or is about to - star in their own big-budget Hollywood movie.

X-Men: “We’ve got to get her out of there. Cyclops, can you hit it? The rings are moving too fast! Just shoot it! I’ll kill her!”

KF: What Lee did was to create superheroes that lived in the real world, with real problems. Kids could identify with them, as they struggled with relationships, drugs, blindness, racism and other day-to-day hassles as well as super villains and monsters from outer space. Joe Quesada is Marvel Comics’ current Editor-in-chief.

Joe Quesada :“One thing that made Marvel so special was the fact that they were so relevant. They didn’t take place in Metropolis or Gotham City, they took place in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. So real world events really affected these books. And Lee wrote his characters from a real world perspective. The real world affected these characters. You know, as the world changed so did their fashions, so did their attitudes, so did the stories within the books.”

KF: Joe’s theory is that different ages inspire different superheroes. Batman was invented at a time when big city crime was a huge problem. The Second World War led to patriotic heroes like Captain America. The fears of atomic war in the sixties meant almost every superhero then, like Spiderman or the Hulk, was a result of the effects of radioactivity. But what about today, and today’s problems? Would Marvel send superheroes into a war in Iraq, for example?

JQ: “No, here’s the thing, we don’t preach hate. We really don’t. We realise that there’s a lot of terrible stuff that’s going on in the world. But, with respect to dropping bombs on Iraq, I think that sends completely the wrong message. What our books do do though, because we try to remain relevant, is we will mention it in our books. Because we have to, it’s the only way we can remain current. At one point people were saying: why do you even mention September 11th in your books? And I’m like, well, it would be callous for us not to! In a world where Spiderman swings by the Empire State Building, by the Twin Towers, not to mention September 11th would be completely negligent on my part.”

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KF: Marvel underlined its connection to the real world by producing a very moving comic book in tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center attack, a comic that raised a million dollars for the victims’ fund.

So what has brought superheroes out into the big wide world, beyond the fans who actually buy and read comics? The answer is Hollywood. Back in the seventies a number of Superman movies were made, and in the eighties and nineties it was Batman’s turn. Both series started well but the sequels couldn’t maintain the right quality.

For many years Marvel Comics were scared of the movie world, scared that their characters wouldn’t be handled right on the big screen, but towards the end of the nineties that attitude changed, and the result was a film called the X-men. Although the X-men had a relatively small budget, it was directed by a “serious” director, Bryan Singer. Singer wanted to make a film about people with a dark problem and the X-Men fit the bill. They are mutants, born with special powers but hated by ordinary people. They face the same problem as any controversial minority, which gives the story a racist metaphor.

X-Men: “Fight with you, or join the team? Be an X-man? Who the hell do you think you are. You’re a mutant. There’s a whole world out there that hates and fears you, and you’re wasting your time trying to protect them? I’ve got better things to do.”

KF: The film did very well, making much more money at the box office than expected. Marvel were encouraged and went for the big project – a movie about their most popular character, Spider-man. A schoolboy nerd who is bitten by a radioactive spider, making him super-strong and an amazing acrobat, with his very own web.

Spiderman: “This is my gift, and my curse. Who am I? I’m Spiderman.”

KF: Directed by a comics fan himself, Sam Raimi, the movie was a huge, blockbuster success. At Marvel, Joe Quesada puts that down to the movie staying true to the source material - the original comic book story.

JQ: “Spiderman’s about 90% true to what Stan Lee put down on the page. And I think what it really showed people was – y’know, stay true to the source material, you’ve got one of the greatest hits of all time on your hands. Not only that, it also proves to the rest of the

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world, I think, that come on down, just pick up a comic book, see what we’re about. Get past the stigma that has been created in this country that you’re a retard for reading comics. And you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the content that you find within the pages.”

KF: Of course another big reason the films work is the advances made inspecial effects, where computer-generated scenes make the action look real. Hollywood loves success and so both the X-Men 2 and Spiderman 2 will come out soon. But it won’t stop there. Suddenly superheroes are the in thing. 2003 will also see movies starring The Hulk, a big green super strong misunderstood monster, and Daredevil, a blind vigilante who’s a lawyer by day.

Other superhero movies on the way include the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, set in the 19th century with characters from Victorian literature like Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde and the Invisible Man.

There are another dozen film projects on the go in Hollywood based on comics – not all of them about superheroes. In fact, several of the most popular films in recent years are based on comic books – hits like Men in Black, Blade, Ghost World and Road to Perdition.

Mitch runs a comic store on St. Mark’s in the middle of New York’s Greenwich Village. He’s been involved in the comics trade for some twenty years. Superhero movies mean more comics buyers – if the movie is good. Like Spiderman.

Mitch: “Kids who didn’t know who Spiderman was, are now interested in Spiderman. Adults all knew who Spiderman was, they all read Spiderman when they were a kid. What it does is that it reminds them why they loved him so much. And then they come back in and go ‘You know, I used to love that, but I stopped buying comics, do you have any…?’ It doesn’t make them new customers, it makes them customers again.”

KF: So more and more people are coming into comic stores, and many are coming back, but just who are they? Don’t people still think comics are for little boys? And men who are still little boys? Well, meanwhile, outside the comic store…

Girls outside: “We’re outside St Marks comics store. You have just been in there and bought something. Do you read comics? Yes I do.

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Why do you read comics? People have this idea that it’s a boys’ thing. It’s really not a boys’ thing, anyone can enjoy it. I mean, it’s more visual than books, which is cool. And you can use your imagination more than you can with TV. What sort of stories do you read about? Is it the superheroes or the other stuff that grabs you? I read Batman. I have a thing for Batman. I like him because he doesn’t have any super powers, he’s just really smart. Anyone could become a superhero then. How about you, do you read comics? Occasionally. I like the pictures. I’m into art so that’s why I like looking at them. Not so much the story, just looking at how they draw them. And you’re not into comics so much. Not really, I guess I read them in the paper sometimes. Do you think it’s a boys’ thing? No I think anyone can enjoy comic books, they’re fun.”

KF: Yes, girls. Females! People with two X chromosomes who read comics? Is it possible? Yes, and according to Jenny Lee, who is an editor at Marvel Comics in New York, they are a group that’s growing stronger. But sadly many of the women in the comics are there to look good.

Jenny Lee: “We’re talking about an industry in which, yes, a lot of the women are completely overblown with these Barbie doll-like proportions. And certainly here in this country sex sells, and it’s a pop culture medium. It’s a business at the end of the day and to ignore what works from a marketing perspective might not be the smartest business strategy, but as a person, as a woman of colour, certainly there are things that I find very challenging. I try wherever possible to contribute my voice so that I can have some influence on producing the media images that today’s little girls, today’s teen girls and young women and college students are going to look at and be affected by. And certainly there are a lot of comic books out there with really great female characters that are complex, that are three-dimensional, that are interesting, that are representative of real people in real dilemmas.”

KF: What’s the attraction of these graphic stories? Why would anyone want to read about men or women in clothes that are either

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extremely sexy or just very silly fighting other men and women in similar costumes? The answer appears to date back centuries.

JQ: “What draws people to these characters are the exact same things that have been drawing people to these characters since the dawn of time. What we do on the printed page, with our drawings, with our words, is no different than people sitting around a camp fire back in ancient times talking about the great warriors of the hunt. Whether they existed or not! It’s no different than cave paintings. No different than ancient Greeks or ancient Romans telling tales about the gods. People will always need heroes because they are an idealisation of what we want to be, or what we strive to be, on a daily basis.”

Mitch: “There is an undeniable connection, when you find your hero. Superman or Batman or Spiderman or whoever your hero is, there’s an undeniable connection. And there must be something there to keep these characters so popular and so in the public consciousness, not just here in the States but world wide for… 60, 70 years. There’s something there.”

KF: This has been Close View. Check out our scripts at www.ur.se/overtoyou, where you can find lots of web links to comics sites and some recommended reading. See you!

Music: R Kelly “I believe I can fly..”

LINKS

Comics producers www.marvel.com www.dccomics.com www.imagecomics.com www.darkhorse.com www.wildstorm.com

Information www.comicscontinuum.com www.friendsoflulu.com www.sequentialtart.co.uk www.comicsinternational.com www.kingofmycastle.freeserve.co.uk/links.htm

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