Rations
Putting aside the fact that the superhero has clear precedence in myth and legend and the pulp fiction of the early twentieth century, the genesis of the modern superhero begins in the nineteen thirties, between wars, so it is natural to expect a correlation between the two.

Comics, though, with the exception of the Commando war books, rarely deal with the ordinary soldier caught up in a combat situation. Two Fisted Tales did a very good job of this and War Is Hell! with its blend of horror also dealt well with the faceless dread. But when a superhero dons a costume, it is bright and spangly - he wears the flag rather than just representing it. Though note the case of Captain America, who is given both his powers and costume by the government and, when he apparently perishes, is replaced by other patriotic heroes Spirit of '76 and The Patriot. This tradition has continued into modern times when Steve Rogers falls out with the government and is replaced, taking on a new identity as Nomad. This idea of the faceless government operative deployed in the war zone is also shown in the personification of the Unknown Soldier.

Naturally romance is rare in a combat zone and only appeared after the war but other things like fantasy and drama combine successfully with battlefield heroics.

Science fiction can always trot out that evergreen War of the Worlds and the macabre aspect of global conflict is represented by Weird War Tales.

As far as I can tell Jonah Hex is the only character who recalls the fact that the Wild West was the battleground for the American Civil War. By the time we read his adventures he is a bounty hunter but he still wears the Confederate uniform.
Now, hot off the presses, is a graphic depiction of the Civil War itself.

Humour and war would seem to be strange bedfellows but the Bluey and Curly strip proved that it was possible.

And you want reality? Lest we forget, the
War artist. Grunts can grunt all they want but you try facing mortar fire with a stick of charcoal and a HB.

Spill
Although funny animal does not have to be funny, it usually is, and caped critters often have a feature that both plays on their power potential and their name to humorous effect. Underdog springs to mind.

Apart from Joe Casey quips in the Stan Lee tradition, superheroes regularly receive comedic treatment. From normalman, powerless in a world of supertypes to Megaton Man whose exaggerated bulk is reminiscent of those Image titles where everything is drawn large.

Of the other genres that the superhero crosses over with, Ka-Zar may be the token 'Aryan in the jungle' for today's mighty world of Marvel but the one true crossover character is Black Panther.
Having not given sword and sorcery its own entry yet I feel sheepish mentioning Sword of the Atom and that may not be the only reason.

From the well
There are five possibilities when you find yourself able to turn your body paper thin or you just start wearing a costume and calling out thugs:

1. become a superhero
   
2. be labelled an 'anti-hero' because your cause only intersects with humans at times and your priorities are with your own people
   
3. become an anti-hero in truth because your methods of apprehending criminals is brutal if not fatal
   
4. remain your slacker self
   
5. become a supervillain
   
   What each of these options, slackers aside, suggest is that there will be elements of drama, crime, and action. Now it is possible that a superhero could use their power to get a kite down from a tree but such fey adventures would not enthrall the average reader, so baddy bopping it is.
   
   So is there any genre crossover worth talking about? Well, allowing for the fact that many superheroes have fought on the battlefront, making this just a variation on what they do, that leaves the western and spy thriller.
   Masked heroes like the Durango Kid are often written as precursors to the superhero, with the uncanny ability to shoot the gun from outlaws' hands.
   
   No matter how many mystery men there are who only come out at night, and no matter how dark the costume, however, they are different to Man From U.N.C.L.E.. Spies work for the government in a covert capacity. They dress down more than they dress up (James Bond excepted) though they do share larger than life villains and plots to overthrow the world. The key difference is that many of the superheroes operate as vigilantes and are tolerated by the authorities only to a degree: from the close cooperation of a Commissioner Gordon to the outright hostility you or I would be treated to should we try the same thing in the real world.
   
   There has been a licensing and corraling of metahumans from time to time, and several plotlines deal with the hero attempting to trap his quarry while at the same time avoiding police or government operatives. But the true synthesis of the two is best exemplified by the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, government agents given their powers and identities by the United Nations and restricted to the task at hand and the need to work as a team.
   
   Posted by berko_wills at 1:19 PM EADT

   Updated: Friday, 6 January 2006 11:59 PM EADT

   Share This Post

   Post Comment | Permalink

Drawing
This is a serviceable reading of the superhero genre: that it is an amalgam of crimefighting and science fiction/fantasy. I don't know how much it matters that there are nonpowered costumed characters stopping bank robbers their entire career with not so much as a mad scientist to give them their SF badge.

The crimefighting career of a superhero is prescribed largely; all that indestructibility and movement tells the writer that Steel Sterling battling a drink driver is not the most rivetting use for the character. It isn't just the use of his power (derivative even in nineteen forty)that makes the reader want to follow his adventures either, there has to be something more to Sterling's character for us to care how he's become a costumed spokesman for responsible motoring.

The drama of Ibis the Invincible and the action in Spy Smasher may be as important components as any intrinsic element in the superhero genre itself (say, enhanced powers or the wearing of a defining costume and persona)and Rip Hunter is as much about adventure as it is any thwarting of evil.

The trope of the dead avenger with a singleminded mission to bring a supernatural sense of justice to their killers and all like them, ironically moors your
Grim Ghost in a conventional pursuit of bad guys. He may be a bit harsher in how he treats them than the Hangman. Or perhaps not.

Romance is present in varying degrees, from the stoic and sexless supertypes through to the sensuous and sapphic. It remained secondary perhaps until the advent of Young Heroes in Love, a book that could be called a combination of genres, given how many superhero stories do not feature any love interest at all.

I believe we can get a better sense of which genres the superhero set mesh with if we look at what happens to a person who is many times more powerful than normal. What does this do to their life? What effect is it bound to have?

Mixture
Apologies to all the humanists and spiritualists but it's time we moved on.

Having flown through all the genres, it becomes apparent that not only are some problematic in adequately describing what a particular book may contain but also that there are many that are a combination of genres.

Let's start with the superhero who might be said to inhabit three genres: science fiction, fantasy, and crime.

Consider Captain Atom who combines the hard science of the atom bomb with the SF staple of UFO technology producing a combination that can only be fantasy. No one could survive that blast!

It is inevitable that, even if you're a Human Bomb you'll put aside your incendiary concerns and go after the bad guy; whether that guy is a saboteur or a thief. After all, we can think of advantages for diamond hard skin that the patriotic Blue Diamond would have no time for while there was a war on.

For a hero like the Darknight Detective, his focus on beating criminals was set by the tragedy that defined his life. Even in the year that war broke out. It was only later squeamish comics code curtailing of crime comics that sent he and Robin into space. But this was not true to his calling and, as soon as they could, the publishers were only too happy to have him back on the streets.

Font
In any discussion of religion and fiction (perhaps especially comic book fiction) there is naturally an attraction to mysticism and metaphysics over some rationalist perspective. Not that the free thinkers never get a look in, just that the fantasy world of comics thrives on the magical and mysterious.

This could lead into a discussion on Romanticism, only I want to hold that over till we get talking about literature and the way that literary movements and literary criticism impact on the graphic medium. So instead, let me remark that the mystic traditions of Christianity such as the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar; and Judaism, in the form of the Kabbalah, run as a very interesting undercurrent to comics mythology. And the freemasons will always be good for a spot of intrigue.
If you want, you can pile in the Illuminati and Club of Rome.

Just as our legends bear the ring of truth in all the hyperbole, so too do comics serve a dramatic need by drawing directly on a real sense of the unknown and the yet to be discovered. Their exaggerated stance illuminating something buried within us.

Baptismal
Religion has come up a number of times in our discussion. While characters with cosmic powers would seem to be a challenge to the omnipotence of any big 'G' God, the moral standpoint works as a good reference point for all but the callous and ambivalent anti-heroes thus we see:

• Christianity
  
• Judaism
  
• Islam
  
• Buddhism
  
• Hinduism
  
• Confucianism
  
• Taoism
  
• Japanese golf religion (contents may vary)
• Rastafarianism
  
• Baha'i
  
• Zoroastrianism and Mithraism
  Sikhism
  
• satanism
  
• shintoism
  
• paganism
  
• vodun
  
• gnosticism
  
• theism
  
• universism (an umbrella term I hadn't heard)
  
• Deism (for the little reference to 'the Deists who founded America')
  
• atheism
  
• agnosticism
  scientology
  sects
  nihilism
  
  Posted by berko_wills at 2:11 PM EADT

  Updated: Wednesday, 23 November 2005 9:02 PM EADT

  Share This Post

  Post Comment | Permalink

Choke
For a comics primer that has run through nearly all the genres and many of the aspects of the medium, surprising we have yet to investigate a dominant strain: humour. It has been touched on a number of times and there have been inadvertently humorous moments, but funny animal is the only area in this broader category that I have looked at thusfar.

Certainly it is appropriate to treat funny animals separately as they are as much a force in comics as the long underwear characters; especially when you add animated forays into the mix.
But humour is so broad that I may have been subconsiously putting it off.

The trouble with 'humour' though is that even picturing the act of fending off humour is funny (if you're in the right mood) and so you never quite manage it. The endless reductive circles you could find yourself in as a result of trying to ascertain the point at which the idea has lost all trace of humour is another matter.

But I digress like a standup comedian, humour at least pops up at times in:

• satire: under no obligation to be funny but often is. Though I do wonder if Swiftian satire can be absorbed under the large banner of black humour
  
• parody of both the form and within the form looking out or glancing across.
  
• lampoon
  
• pisstake or send-up
  
• whimsy: while the link here refers to whimsy, it's more of a rant against pc considerations in looking at the worth of stories, so here's a better example
  
• slapstick
  
• irony
  
  

The references get increasingly dodgy. I couldn't even find one for farce, which is farcical in itself. But you get the general idea. The fact is that you don't need this primer for a subject like humour (with or without a second u)or even to explain the difference between humour and comedy

Double
The industry is so plastic that there has been much borrowing. This isn't unique to comics as any fan of the blues or Shakespearean theatre can tell you.

Apart from recycled plot lines and 'surprise' endings, even the names of characters and the powers they possess have been given regular reworkings.

Much of this is, as we have seen, as a result of the Silver Age retooling of Golden Age characters. This applies to both Marvel and DC and is handled differently according to the status of the character but also considered is their origin, their costume, their powers or traits. Changing the character from an alien to an android may reflect changes in times and technology as much as a desire to make the character 'better'.

The iconic characters had to be brought across whole while the characters further down the totem underwent more radical changes to their identity.

I suppose when Stan Lee was borrowing from the past, he was just as happy to snaffle up something from some other company to use as his own as he was to draw from Timely sources. But the appropriation of licensed companies by DC has seen them also offering different treatments to the Archie/Red Circle group of superheroes (who are undervalued in my opinion)and Charlton as well

Certain names recur quite separate from straight revamps. We have a couple of unrelated characters named Catman and there's obviously something irresistible about the name Captain Marvel:

• the Big Red Cheese
  
• the gruesome character whose power is for his limbs to fly off
  
• Mar-Vell at the uses of Rick Jones
  (One of the iterations of Captain Marvel was a black woman...)

(or if that's too disparate and confusing, there's a scholarly take that looks at all CM manifestations)

and the other name to remember is Power Man

• Rip Regan
  
• the Down Under Power Man
  
• Power Man (UK)
  
• the Marvel villain
  
• Luke Cage
  
• Powerman/Powerbolt (Nigeria)

Classic
What makes a comic classic?

It can't coast on the coat tails of some existing more established form as the chances are that there is no adaptation of Everyman or any attempt would fall short of what was required.

Of course a book can have a significance particular to its medium that makes a comics adaptation superfluous; it isn't the strength of the story or the way it is told that gives it its status.

So, staying within the medium, how can we recognize the classics of the form? Given the age of literary classics, are comics in their current from too recent for us to discern which are, or will be, classics? It isn't age alone that determines a classic or Dollman would automatically be accorded that honour.

I think, under a loose definition, that Eisner and Fine's creation does fit the bill. But here I am doing so without having read the stories but having considered the impact and the longevity of the series. Add in a level of expectation encouraged by the creators involved and it is easy to see how the title is applied. It carries more credence than Disney Entertainment labelling of every release, regardless of vintage or audience acceptance, as a 'classic' but sticklers may still want further proof.

I'm not even sure the best story or the earliest example qualify a work as being classic unless they have lasting resonance. A cartoonist may be revered but one would have to see a sample of their work to know whether it was classic. Perhaps.

Though I don't suppose we can brush off consensus in gauging a work's bid to be considered classic, picking sales figures or readership as the criterion seems also misplaced. It's more likely that the verve that was brought to Daredevil make it a classic, rather than the number of readers it had in its day.