American mythology alive and well in the comic book
Holy Depends, Batman, you’re an old fart.
After 75 years of brooding in the shadows, working out mommy and daddy issues and taking out your repressed grief and endless wellspring of anger on the scum of the earth, you’re as conflicted as ever.
Let it go, man. They’re not coming back.
Maybe it’s time to show some growth, Bats. Quicksilver has come out of the closest. Spider-Man has been a half black, half Puerto Rican boy. Thor is a chick. Captain America is a brother.
In comic lore, times are changing. Could Bruce Wayne capture the zeitgeist from working in a bicurious tryst with a new, street legal, youthful ward? Just asking.
No? You’re probably right. Characters like Batman don’t need growth; not as long as human beings identify with misplaced anger and pathos run amok. Superman will always be for truth and justice, and be indestructibly boring. The Hulk will always be a 1-ton rage beast personifying the off-the-charts manic depressive duality in us all.
These characters are the American mythology, our Greek gods, our Norse legends, the embodiment of our hopes, the heroes who seek justice and exact retribution over societal ills, and worse, our deepest darkest fears.
It’s Batman’s birthday year, and he is the star of this weekend’s Mecca of nerd-core pop culture, San Diego’s Comic-Con International. Although the biggest names in film and television have taken over the convention in recent years with their incessant hawking, star-studded panels and sneak previews, at the heart of Comic-Con remains the undying love of the comic book and its parade of heroes and villains who allow us to dream of the infinite or deal with our angst.
It’s been many years since I pored over comic books, coveting my complete set of Marvel Universe character bios, special weapons and dead characters editions, or ingesting everything from the classic heroes like Spider-man, X-Men, the Hulk or the Flash, to more off-kilter titles of my youth such as ‘Nam, Howard the Duck, Moon Knight or Bizarro.
It didn’t matter what it was, I was there; because, frankly, I wanted to be anywhere but here.
Looking back, I can see why the Hulk was and is my undisputed favorite. He was angry, always. And when he was upset he acted, doing so incoherently and completely. I found that comforting, because I was an angry little boy, who gave way to an angry teenager and an angry adult. The Hulk was my surrogate, my raging stand-in when I couldn’t act out.
I’m no rabid collector, I can’t rattle off obscure titles and exact editions in which bit players and strange storylines came in to play — it’s the idea more than the execution for me. Yet comics meant a lot to me; they were personal, they kept me reading and learning, growing and evolving with their stories and characters, even thriving in my own Walter Mitty-ish type of way. I acted out every superhuman feat in those pages.
This new golden era of the comics breaking into the pop culture has resurrected something in many of us. The Hollywood summer blockbusters and the technology that has allowed illustrated panels in paper-thin books to be actualized before our very eyes is a reconnection with youth, a reclaiming of those trivial things that helped form a temporary stay from the real world.
The evolution of the comic book has been as complicated as the evolution of our lives, as the evolution of society. In the pages of these books, through the sheen of fantastically colorful costumes and men behind masks, through superhuman strength and uncanny mutations, comics tackled the Nazi threat, living under the psychological lash of the Cold War, issues of race and class, the rise of the counterculture, drug abuse, global terrorism and gay marriage.
Two Jewish kids from Cleveland, Joe Siegel and Jerry Shuster, needed to create a symbol of the America they very much wanted to feel part of, an alien-man able to thrive and be the savior to the broader human race, a man who would earn respect and adoration despite his differences.
Stan Lee needed to create a more modern twist on the hero, a teenager with all the problems, insecurities and girl drama of the guy sitting next to you in class, only able to crawl walls and shoot webbing from his wrists. This hero didn’t want it, but had it thrust upon him and has never been fully at ease with it.
Superman was Shuster and Siegel’s dreams of inclusion. Spider-Man was Lee’s take on the reality of responsibility ramming up against a self-centered society. Batman was creator Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s foray into the dark justice of a tortured child. In between, comics and characters have helped us understand ourselves and the crazy, conflicted world around us, what we want from it and what we don’t.
This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, July 25, 2014.