Looking at Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, and wondering just who the audience is for this comic cover ...
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
A Bird In the Hand
Coming up next!
Looking at Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, and wondering just who the audience is for this comic cover ...
Looking at Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, and wondering just who the audience is for this comic cover ...
Able To Leap Tall Buildings -- A Blogging Perspective and Mission Statement
Let's face it. No matter how many Statue of Liberty shots you reference from the 1978 "Superman" movie, I won't be convinced that New York City is the real-world equivalent of Superman's Metropolis. No matter how much you praise the fitting glass and steel background of "The Dark Knight's" boardrooms on LaSalle in Chicago, I'll never think the gothic Gotham City is bright and sunny Chicago, Illinois. Nor will I ever believe in the comic book maps people have created that place both cities squarely on the East Coast. Writers can tell me these superheroic environments lurk near Connecticut; artists can draw skylines tying them to the Big Apple. There are those who say that Gotham City is New York City in the nighttime, and Metropolis is New York in the daylight. But I'll never listen to them.
Because Metropolis is actually Chicago.
First off, look at any comic artist's rendition of Metropolis (I'll provide a few examples at the end of this post). It's almost always bright, there's tons of sky for Superman to zoom across, the buildings create steel canyons to be navigated and wondered at. The artwork almost always carries with it a tinge of young adults entering a city for the first time -- there's always an amazement at the towering buildings' architecture. You're never made to fear the danger that everything could crumble or close in on the city's inhabitants catastrophically at any moment (despite the fact that giant killer robots seem to arrive in town every five seconds).
This stands in line with the perspective of Superman's creators: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They were suburban kids standing outside city life until they hit it big with the first ever superhero. They probably saw Metropolis as the dream city, their nearest examples being Cleveland and Cincinnati. Their next nearest, and by far more thrilling, was Chicago -- hog butcher to the world, yes; but peddler of mighty muckraking papers, home to all the major industry in the Midwest, and the bold advertiser of its lake shore and bold, modern architecture.
Sure, Siegel and Shuster lived in New York City while crafting their comics, but there's a Midwestern sensibility to the rhythms of their great Metropolis -- an optimistic belief that anything is possible coupled with a sort of Minnesota Nice flavor; all engendered by its Kansas-raised champion. These artists never forgot their roots, making the city a wonderful, even beautiful place to live; you see more blue sky in an issue of Superman than you do in five issues of Captain America (who's based out of NYC). Even in modern comics, Metropolis allows small children to run across its rooftops and holds giant concerts in its analog to Millennium Park. Nothing about its neighborhoods or people reads as cynical East Coast, urban nightmarish or competitive, hectic NYC living to me -- even in today's comics, where Metropolis currently makes do without its Superman. The influences that drove Siegel and Shuster to build a shining city should be understood, in order to understand the world they were building for children and adults alike way back in the 1930s and 1940s. After all, it's a model that lasts through today.
I say all this because the reason comic books have carved out a deep niche for themselves in American culture has everything to do with their ability to fulfill readers' fantasies. Siegel and Shuster and a host of other artists were able to take the nearest reality they knew -- the impressive metropolis of Chicago -- and turn it into a fantasy city built to showcase a man flying across its landscape, able to leap even its tallest buildings, showing its population anything is possible in a progressive industrial and urban age. They took the spirit of Chicago and made their idealization of its can-do, down and dirty attitude into something accessible for all readers, Midwestern or not. Meaning their fans could live in Metropolis, too, just like Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. They could be part of the action, and still are to this day, because DC Comics and its stable of writers have never changed its outlook when it comes to Metropolis. In the grim and gritty 1980s deconstruction of superheroes, Metropolis remained a beacon to the middle America that defines Superman's upbringing, and likewise, defines its readership now.
So, comics thrive on the marriage of fantasy and reality. It may seem strange to think reality has anything to do with a medium that features supervillains riding dinosaurs and people running so fast they create alternate dimensions. But I'd argue that comic writers tweak their realities to create the ideals we all seek. In doing this, sometimes they create a powerful touchstone with readers. Sometimes they don't. What I want to analyze in this blog is how the tension between fantasy and reality works in comic books (i.e., how far is too far when it comes to plausibility? can we have a flying man but not a bullet that shoots someone into space?). I also want to spend time discussing what we can learn about the collective American psyche from comic books. (What does our art say about us?) From time to time, I'll post thought pieces like this. But more often than not, I'll spend my time taking apart the comics I read, and then putting their structures back together again. So I can figure out what I'm getting from them as a fan and a human being.
I look forward to whatever I learn on this journey, and I promise not every post will be as heady as this one. Because let's face it, as much as they're based in real world wishes, comics are a ridiculous adventure -- one that I'd love to talk about with anyone out there who's listening. So if you have any reading suggestions, let me know! I want to talk about superheroes, zombies, soldiers. Whatever! I don't discriminate.
Except when it comes to where I think Metropolis lives, that is.
Because Metropolis is actually Chicago.
First off, look at any comic artist's rendition of Metropolis (I'll provide a few examples at the end of this post). It's almost always bright, there's tons of sky for Superman to zoom across, the buildings create steel canyons to be navigated and wondered at. The artwork almost always carries with it a tinge of young adults entering a city for the first time -- there's always an amazement at the towering buildings' architecture. You're never made to fear the danger that everything could crumble or close in on the city's inhabitants catastrophically at any moment (despite the fact that giant killer robots seem to arrive in town every five seconds).
This stands in line with the perspective of Superman's creators: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They were suburban kids standing outside city life until they hit it big with the first ever superhero. They probably saw Metropolis as the dream city, their nearest examples being Cleveland and Cincinnati. Their next nearest, and by far more thrilling, was Chicago -- hog butcher to the world, yes; but peddler of mighty muckraking papers, home to all the major industry in the Midwest, and the bold advertiser of its lake shore and bold, modern architecture.
Sure, Siegel and Shuster lived in New York City while crafting their comics, but there's a Midwestern sensibility to the rhythms of their great Metropolis -- an optimistic belief that anything is possible coupled with a sort of Minnesota Nice flavor; all engendered by its Kansas-raised champion. These artists never forgot their roots, making the city a wonderful, even beautiful place to live; you see more blue sky in an issue of Superman than you do in five issues of Captain America (who's based out of NYC). Even in modern comics, Metropolis allows small children to run across its rooftops and holds giant concerts in its analog to Millennium Park. Nothing about its neighborhoods or people reads as cynical East Coast, urban nightmarish or competitive, hectic NYC living to me -- even in today's comics, where Metropolis currently makes do without its Superman. The influences that drove Siegel and Shuster to build a shining city should be understood, in order to understand the world they were building for children and adults alike way back in the 1930s and 1940s. After all, it's a model that lasts through today.
I say all this because the reason comic books have carved out a deep niche for themselves in American culture has everything to do with their ability to fulfill readers' fantasies. Siegel and Shuster and a host of other artists were able to take the nearest reality they knew -- the impressive metropolis of Chicago -- and turn it into a fantasy city built to showcase a man flying across its landscape, able to leap even its tallest buildings, showing its population anything is possible in a progressive industrial and urban age. They took the spirit of Chicago and made their idealization of its can-do, down and dirty attitude into something accessible for all readers, Midwestern or not. Meaning their fans could live in Metropolis, too, just like Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane. They could be part of the action, and still are to this day, because DC Comics and its stable of writers have never changed its outlook when it comes to Metropolis. In the grim and gritty 1980s deconstruction of superheroes, Metropolis remained a beacon to the middle America that defines Superman's upbringing, and likewise, defines its readership now.
So, comics thrive on the marriage of fantasy and reality. It may seem strange to think reality has anything to do with a medium that features supervillains riding dinosaurs and people running so fast they create alternate dimensions. But I'd argue that comic writers tweak their realities to create the ideals we all seek. In doing this, sometimes they create a powerful touchstone with readers. Sometimes they don't. What I want to analyze in this blog is how the tension between fantasy and reality works in comic books (i.e., how far is too far when it comes to plausibility? can we have a flying man but not a bullet that shoots someone into space?). I also want to spend time discussing what we can learn about the collective American psyche from comic books. (What does our art say about us?) From time to time, I'll post thought pieces like this. But more often than not, I'll spend my time taking apart the comics I read, and then putting their structures back together again. So I can figure out what I'm getting from them as a fan and a human being.
I look forward to whatever I learn on this journey, and I promise not every post will be as heady as this one. Because let's face it, as much as they're based in real world wishes, comics are a ridiculous adventure -- one that I'd love to talk about with anyone out there who's listening. So if you have any reading suggestions, let me know! I want to talk about superheroes, zombies, soldiers. Whatever! I don't discriminate.
Except when it comes to where I think Metropolis lives, that is.
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