Truth, Justice and ... Globalization?

Most people have a particular way of viewing Superman:

This image is burned in my brain, too. I associate Supes with the American flag because that's what he was shown standing in front of during the opening sequence in the 1940s Fleischer brothers cartoons. Those cartoons played endlessly on the Disney channel while I was growing up, and they had a great deal of influence on how I saw the character.

But now my view has to shift. In fact, everybody's view has to shift. All thanks to the following exchange in Action Comics issue number 900, released last week:

But rather than looking at the whole conversation, most people are concerned only by this panel:

Superman is no longer an American citizen, starting with issue number 901. For 73 years, Superman has been fighting for truth, justice and the American Way. Now he's declared himself a global citizen, a UN peace-keeping force in his own right.

And people are losing it. Just check out the comments on the Fox News website when they posted the story a few days ago (http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2011/04/28/superman-renounces-citizenship-00th-issue/#comment). Superman is a representation of America, and for the editors to change this is viewed as sacrilege, an attack against decent Americans everywhere. That's an interesting reaction, I think, and it says a lot about where our society's at right now, given that a comic character widening his allegiances merits discussion on the news and in the newspaper (www.suntimes.com/news/nation/5082803-418/superman-renouncing-his-u.s.-citizenship-in-action-comics). But I'll return to that momentarily. Let's first talk about what happened in this comic book, and what possibilities it nets for future Superman stories.

In this anniversary issue of Action Comics, Superman -- who's been walking across America in an effort to get back in touch with its downhome citizenry -- flies to Iran (Tehran, specifically) to protect a group of protesters. The protesters are under a line of fire from the police and the military, and Superman arrives to let them know they're not alone. He stands at a vigil for them, making sure no one is hurt during the protest. "I stayed in Azadi Square for twenty-four hours," he says. "I didn't move. I didn't speak. I just stayed there." And check out the results of his efforts:

Superman withstands the brunt of gasoline bombs and all manner of projectiles during this vigil, but the protest ends peacefully, largely due to his presence. But Iran's government accuses the U.S. government of committing an act of war by planting its champion on Iranian soil. So Superman gives up his American citizenship, in an effort to label himself a global citizen and clarify that he acts on behalf of the world, that he's not pigeonholed by one country's demands.

This story was written by David S. Goyer, who you may know for his screenwriting chops -- in particular, for his uber-realistic portrayal of Batman in "Batman Begins." I mention this because it explains to me why the story takes place in Iran, and not in UMEC, the DC Corporation's fictional Middle Eastern country. (UMEC literally stands for Unnamed Middle Eastern Country.) And it also sheds some light on a new day for our Big Blue Boy Scout. No longer will he be putting out fires in fictional third world nations; he'll be dealing with real situations. And a step towards making that believable lies in making him an official world protector. It's a bold step for a company that places most of its fictional cities within the confines of New Jersey, and makes its money off cosmic wars in space and zombie attacks close to home. Superman's touched the ground in more ways than one this year, and with this decision, seems to be throwing himself into 21st century globalization. ("The world is too small, too connected," he claims in AC 900.) I'd like to examine the pros and cons of this decision, in relation to storytelling -- then extrapolate its meaning to our larger world. Stay with me here, it might be a bumpy ride ...

Pros:

• Superman has, in a way, always represented a weird part of the America mythos -- the brawny, wish fulfillment part. We're a superpower and Superman's a muscle for us to flex, a creation so centered on stemming conflict that he became pretty boring as the Cold War developed. There's a reason he was so popular during the height of comic sales, back in World War II, and I'm pretty sure his threatening Hitler is one of the reasons. (See below.) Back then, Supes was our strongest and fiercest self, the pinnacle of evolving masculine American identity and pride. That iconography still exists, I'd argue; why else are so many dudes running around on Halloween dressed as Clark Kent turning into Superman? (I saw ten this year, I counted.) But to be a meaningful icon, he needs to keep up with the times, and keeping current as a propaganda cartoon really isn't enough to seal your legendary status these days. Stepping into the 21st century to be a global citizen allows for more relevant, down to earth stories for Superman. It could allow a new American male to arise: a cool, collected, Obama-like male, who imposes his will not based on his seat at the table, or by the work of his fists, but by smart negotiations and peaceful resolutions. Plus, it could allow him to step away from outmoded definitions of male identity -- potentially. Or it could look like more of the same. It could look like this:
  

(For a great examination of why comic books shouldn't address true-to-life military conflicts in contemporary times, check out this excellent blog post over at Comics Should Be Good!: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/09/14/karindu-on-comic-hitler/).

• What stunned me most about this story wasn't that it freed Superman from his American citizenship. I was more shocked to see the story was set in Iran, a place experiencing real conflict nowadays, and with a really complicated relationship to the United States. Of course, it's not Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan we're talking about here, but the setting of this story says a lot about where Superman might be headed. Like I mentioned earlier, DC Comics previously created its own Middle Eastern countries in order to mirror real-life events. So it's a bold move to suddenly include the recent Middle East shake-ups in their storytelling. And I think it's probably a good one. Marvel Comics scored bigger relevance (and a bigger audience) a few years back with their Civil War event. Civil War pitted superhero against superhero in the face of the need for superhuman registration with the government. Now this isn't a new story; Kurt Busiek did it (complete with alien invasion AND vampires!) in his book Astro City, years before Marvel tried it. But Marvel pitched that event at the right time -- in the early 2000s, when people were disillusioned with their government, with its military engagements and obsessive secret-keeping pushing the average American citizen to the side amidst terrifying violence. Who could be trusted? What did America even mean? Vigilantes were no longer a reassuring symbol of the can-do American spirit, and Marvel registered that. It's why they had Captain America arrested and killed. (Of course, he came back. But at the time, that was headline news.) They made their comics relevant again by discussing the temperature of the day. In our waning days as a superpower, Superman and DC comics could do the same. The Man of Steel could impact more than our "running around in a towel for a cape" fantasies; he could make us reflect on our own reality.

• But seriously. I need to be real with you guys. Superman's kind of a narc. I blame editorial control for this. Back when Siegel and Shuster created Superman, he was an effing roughneck. He broke up mob rings, he hoisted wife-beaters by their own petard. He didn't answer to anybody (well, maybe Lois -- but I would, too; she's awesome!). But after World War II, the more independent elements of the character had to be toned down, in favor of being completely pro-America, and in order to avoid censure by a variety of factions in the government. (For amazing comics histories dealing with censorship, check out The Ten-Cent Plague and Men of Tomorrow.) Frank Miller made beacoup de bucks off this narc-y image in The Dark Knight Returns, assigning Superman the role of aide de camp to a Ronald Reagan-esque president, while Batman denounced and battled against the corrupt government. If Superman represents America as a superpower, he also represents America's free-wheeling individualist nature. Renouncing his citizenship may give the character greater latitude to make the right choices, instead of the ones dictated by outmoded American values. I'd like to see a Superman acting under his own powers and ideals, the way every American should.

Cons:

• By taking this step, I worry the folks at DC are wiping away the intense complications that make Superman such a compelling symbol for me. At the heart of Superman's story is an immigration narrative. Let's not forget that he wasn't born in America, and that his creators were the descendants of Jewish immigrants, or that they birthed this character as part muscle-man, part Jesus-like savior (while being Jewish; read the dialogue in that Hitler panel again). To forget the character's creative origins by disassociating him from the crucible he was created in (1930s America) is dangerous. It makes Superman less personal and more problematic. If you don't see the Adonis Complex he grew out of, the nerdish fantasies he was born to fight for, then you're only seeing half the picture. So of course the character is either completely boring to you, or god-like, and frankly, fascistic in his perfection. Superman as an American ideal represents the kind of life Americans should be leading in a melting pot, sure. But the best writers and artists still manage to embrace the wonder that Supes' other-ness generates. Geoff Johns' work on the character (though heavy-handed at times, for my taste) does an exemplary job probing Superman's alien-ness without excusing it. He is not all man (Clark Kent), nor all alien (Kal-El); he's both things combined in a mongrelish, immigrant identity. He's Superman. And that strong claim on identity is what makes him powerful. He doesn't take guff from anyone, because he can host three heritages at once.

• Making The Man of Tomorrow a champion of today is a tricky business, particularly in a world as complicated as ours. If DC writers are going to place him in real-world conflicts, there's the possibility that they could undersell those conflicts and have Superman solve all problems, like a benevolent but mighty god. He's done it in the past, but I can tolerate that when he's doing it off in space somewhere. Make him our mighty overlord in the real world, and I think he loses all relevance. It's not easy to solve problems by showing up. Look at what's going on in Libya right now. If Superman engages with reality in any way, it must be to provide an allegorical tale of some sort. He's a metaphor to be molded, to say something about the human experience. Stepping in where you don't belong is something that happens to humans; solving a conflict based solely on that misstep isn't. (For good examples of how the idea of superheroics and Superman have been used to tell stories of fatherhood, growing up and the value of shifting identities, check out Superman: Secret Identity and any volume of Astro City -- which showcases what it's like for regular folks to live in a city of heroes.)

I guess in the above, I've showcased a little of how Superman reflects America's social values. But I'd like to dig deeper into that, if I could. (I won't go into the legal details of whether or not Superman's actually able to renounce his citizenship; but if you're curious about that, check out the amazing Law and the Multiverse blog: http://lawandthemultiverse.com/2011/04/28/supermans-citizenship/.) What does it mean for an American icon to go global? On the face of it, I'd say DC's trying to be provocative and snag up even more cash -- after all, the anniversary issue we're talking about costs almost six dollars. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the homogenizing efforts of Coca Cola and McDonald's; fries and bottled pop show up everywhere these days and they mean the same thing to everyone. Will Superman someday?

I mean, he's been stopping volcanoes from killing entire populations on obscure islands for decades now. But does that mean he belongs to everyone? Or that everyone belongs under his protectorship? Isn't there something dangerous in that? Because I've saved you, I now own you; I know what's best for you. Do you get what I'm saying? I'm not worried about Superman's irrelevance here. I'm worried he'll become more relevant under the guise of liberal guilt from middle-aged male comic writers. I'm worried he'll be even more conflated than he already is with American homogenization and intervention. I'm worried he's more imperialistic now than he was when he threatened to sock Hitler on the jaw. And I'm worried the writers of DC don't understand what they're doing when they have a gigantic white man swoop in and save the Middle East.

Angry voices on the Internet are spewing bile about Supes' choice being a betrayal of American values. If that's the case, my question becomes: what values does Superman represent? Whose values? He can claim to be a global citizen all he wants, but the company men at DC (Jim Lee and Dan Didio, publishers) are still saying he embodies the best of the American Way. So what's going on here? Where are we headed? Can we be both sides of the coin at the same time? I think that's the question Americans face everyday in the 21st century. We're nowhere near as righteous as we once were; we come across as meddlers on a global stage, and I don't know that Superman's the person to teach how to readjust that position. (After all, he's only stopped other military conflicts -- in For Tomorrow and Unconventional Warfare -- because his wife was involved. If Superman's the American Way, then Lois Lane is surely Lady Liberty, aka Democracy, and he makes the world safe for her and the war-torn countries she barges into as a reporter.)

But I digress. I have concerns as well as hopes for this latest direction in Superman's story. Largely because the fantasies we share reflect the goings-on of our times. That's why literature and pop culture have been studied so extensively by the academy. Still. What this denouncing has to say about America's awareness of the world, or our nation's place in it while under the thrall of a damaged economy and within a shaky political landscape, is anyone's guess. Maybe this story will reflect these troubled times. Maybe it'll exist in a bubble. But I hope not. We deserve better. And so does the unfettered, free-flying Superman of our imaginations.

Why I Hate the Flash (An Opinion Which Causes Undue Concern Amongst My Peers, But Which Remains Valid, Nonetheless)

Metropolis Is Actually Chicago Proudly Presents a Guest Post by Nick Philpott!

There is a problem in comic books today, and that problem has a face.

And that face is The Flash.

The Scarlet Speedster. If you ask anyone who their favorite Justice Leaguer is, you will probably get either Batman or Superman as an answer (my feminist friends skew toward Wonder Woman hate because "she doesn't wear any damn pants"). You rarely hear someone say, "You know who the baddest motherfucker in the Justice League is? The Flash. That motherfucker is fast." Because while it is valid that he is fast, that is all he ever seems to be.

I'll let you insert your own dirty jokes about what he is fast at. Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition.

The only time I can recall being particularly moved by the Flash before sitting down to write this article/retrospective/disorganized ramble was probably the only time 90% of comic book fans have felt strongly connected to him: the one time four years before I was born when he died by running too fast. I'm just gonna let that sink in for a bit. Also, let's remember, that, while noble, Barry Allen's sacrifice happens in like, the third month of twelve in Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a stumbling block for the Anti-Monitor, but only a stumble.

I think Barry Allen is a good place to start with why I hate the Flash. Every fucking person in those books is related to everyfuckingbody else. Barry Allen and Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash/That Asshole From the Future Who Won't Pick A Name are in-laws, for Christ's sake. Which is not to discount the inherent villainy amongst in-law relationships.

The first independent Flash book I read (independent as in, it was not a Justice League team-up, and I was not under the impression that Batman would show up) was Geoff Johns's The Flash: Rebirth, because I loved what Geoff had done with Green Lantern in the same fashion. Say what you will about him, he is a man who knows what makes a superhero a superhero to everyone and what they need to deal with to come back from the dead after a couple of decades, etc.

ANYWAY, Flash: Rebirth. For the first issue and a half, let's say, I felt like I had gotten lost in some freakish family reunion of the Wests and Allens, with "Aunt Iris Allen" and "Linda Park-West" and "Bart Allen," the grandson that was born to Barry's children that he and Iris had in the 30th century. after he died in the Crisis, somehow (this kind of time-hopping, trip-happy near-paradox is why most people find comic books to be, in a word, retarded).

On the whole, though, I thought Rebirth was fantastic. Seeing the Flash and Reverse Flash explicitly shown as two sides of the same coin in an electrical sense, a temporal sense, etc., was pretty excellent. They're a battery, and one side can't function without the other to function against. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, if you will. And the notion of Barry actually being the Speed Force. Brilliant. It's these kind of humongous gestures that make comic books the most endearing medium to me, because they know no budgetary limitations, there is no derision for bad CGI, it is whatever the artists and the writer can wrangle from their brains. Sometimes, it's incoherent drivel, but sometimes, you get a glimpse of genius.

So I thought, "Hey, a book where I actually cared about the Flash, and the fact that he was pretty fast. Maybe I should do some research." And sure enough, one of the biggest Flash-fans out there , Sarah Bowden (author of this blog!--Ed.), had several volumes on-hand that she wanted me to read. I will not pretend that reading Rebirth and the two books she gave me make me a Flash-factmaster, but they gave me enough to articulate (with evidence!) why I think 98% of Flash stories can die in a fire, and how that is representative of the stagnation endemic to comic books as a larger medium.

The books she loaned me were The Return of Barry Allen by Mark Waid, a saga from the early '90s, which notably pre-dates the Speed Force and therefore the notion that Barry Allen was merely a part of the Speed Force (or the Speed Force itself), and The Human Race by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, which is actually two smaller stories in one volume. I will go ahead and say that, while in general, I'm a Grant Morrison fanatic, a casual fan of Mark Millar, and a person who would like to see Mark Waid just retire before he be allowed to ruin things any further, but Sarah assured me that I would find Return of Barry Allen (which I have been assured is not only a classic of the Flash canon, but comics in general) enlightening, Flash-wise, so I held my tongue, checked my mental baggage and dove into it headfirst.

I'm going to skip to the end, without summarizing the book, and say that I hated it, with a fire that I reserve for few things. One of things about the Flash that I found admirable, if not particularly interesting per se, was that when the Flash Family died, they capital-D Died. After Barry Allen outran the Anti-Monitor's gizmo, he was Dead. When Professor Zoom vibrated his hand into Iris' head, she was Dead. That generation was gone, and it was time for Wally and Linda to shine, albeit with an occasional hand from Jay Garrick, who is just too goddamn lovable to keep down (like a grandpa that just will not take a goddamn nap). The Return of Barry Allen came out in 1993, just shy of a decade after Barry's death. Granted, in superhero-time, eights months is an eternity, so the fact that they made it a whole year, much less eight, is laudable. Hell, Superman was only dead for like, seven months and Captain America and Batman were more accurately gone than dead. But regardless, it was only eight years. Infinite Crisis was only six years ago, to put that in perspective.

This isn't to say I was anti-Barry Allen returning. I've got no beef with Barry, mostly because I never knew him. I've got a beef with comic book writers feeling slighted because they never got to tell "their" stories with their favorite superheroes (see also: the return of Jason Todd, people who still write Justice Society of America books), so they resurrect them, usually by cosmic coincidence or convenient amnesia.

I mean, come on, people. There has to be a line between comic books and soap operas, or else, what has this all been about?

So there's Mark Waid, bringing back Barry Allen. The whole point of the arc was a noble one. Making Wally overcome his limitations to be faster than Barry opened up a whole 'nother side of of Wally that was pretty rad to explore, as far as temporal/spatial distortions and faster-than-time-travel. My problem lies with Waid's methods. Because not only did he feel like he needed to bring "Barry" back, but he's made Professor Zoom's hatred of Barry rooted in a fucking time paradox. (Author's note: I fucking hate time paradoxes.)

Summary: basically Zoom grows up in the 25th century (or some fuckin' nonsense) idolizing Barry Allen, has plastic surgery to LOOK like Barry Allen, (this part is fuzzy, it might just be a clever mask), buys the Cosmic Treadmill at a thrift store, makes himself super fast by doing future experiments of some indeterminate but painful sort, runs back in time, but far enough to meet Barry, goes to the Flash museum to mope, finds out that Barry's nemesis Zoom is actually himself and that one day in his future/the Flash's past, Barry Allen will snap Zoom's neck for generally being a complete and total bastard. Wally has a battle of wits with Zoom in the Flash Museum and gets Zoom to run back into the future on the Cosmic Treadmill, which somehow erases his memory because that's convenient. Oh, and Zoom read all about Barry's biography in a book called THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FLASH by -- wait for it -- Iris Allen.

This summary seems like it is haphazard , but I assure you, it was written less than a week after reading the book.

ANYWAYS, The Return of Barry Allen. Aside from the fact that Zoom hates the Flash because Zoom hates the Flash (metaphysics, people, it's not hard), the endgame of the whole saga is (a) yes, Barry is gone, (b) yes, Professor Zoom is still a dick, (c) Wally had the power all along, he just had to believe in himself (gag), (d) I don't think Johnny Quick's "Speed Formula" makes any goddamn sense, mathematically or otherwise, (e) even I was shocked at the rampant objectification of women in the book [Come on, Linda, no one cooks things at the stove for dinner in just their panties {especially not bacon. That grease will spatter and it will burn you.}], and (f) I have no idea why Mark Waid keeps getting work, but I also know exactly why he keeps getting work. He only deals with the familiar, which is the gateway to my larger thesis.

Each person who has to write an ongoing comic series essentially agrees to two things: (1) I have this cast of characters who do these set things, and within that framework, I will do as I please, and (2) I will not fuck with that which has come before, unless it can be fixed before the end of the arc. Everyone who signed on to write Green Lantern Pre-Rebirth knew that he could make anything he willed out of his ring, he had an oath to say to recharge his ring in a battery, and his ring did not work on things that were yellow. Good writers, like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, take these parameters, figure out a reason why they're there, and subvert them into something new, i.e., Parallax, the yellow impurity, Superboy-Prime escaping the pocket universe to "fix" ours.

Sub-par writers, like Mark Waid, Tony S. Daniel, and Judd Winick (to name a few, and risk burning some bridges), take those confines and do what they can without stepping on any tails. People have said that Mark Waid is too nostalgic for Silver-Age comics to be writing a current ongoing series, and I'm hard-pressed to come up with evidence to the contrary.

Therein lies my problem with the Flash: writers who are willing to go different places with the Flash are few and far between. For example, it shouldn't be groundbreaking to me that because Wally West can run at the speed of light, he can time travel, because that is basic relativistic physics. But it is groundbreaking for me, and that's exactly what I loved about the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar Flash arcs.

In the second arc in the book (I think the arc itself is called "The Black Flash" or "Death Comes to Wally West" or something in that vein. Regardless, it was self-explanatory), Mark Millar takes Wally to his limits by killing Linda in the first issue and making him literally beat Death in a race.

Sidebar: I think it's fair to say that the Black Flash is one of my favorite comic book characters and I have literally no idea why. That's a whole other article, honestly. Double sidebar: why is there no Flash/Black Flash The Seventh Seal parody?

ANYWAY, in this arc, instead of having it revealed that a character is still alive (and somehow in the 30th century, setting the stage for a really awkward reunion), the removal of Linda forces Wally to redefine himself as a person and as the Flash. All the growth of character in The Return of Barry Allen happens in the last issue in about five pages while Zoom relishes how evil he is and how soundly he has beaten Wally (even though that was a Mark Waid story, where the good guys can't lose). In the Black Flash arc, Wally grows a little bit in each issue, until it builds to a very satisfying conclusion where, (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS) he races Death to the end of time and then voluntarily runs into the Speed Force to retrieve Linda (END OF SPOILERS).

This is remarkable on several levels. Beating Death is impressive, but depending on how fast you define Wally to be, it's something that could easily be written. In this case, it's a measure of Wally's tactical skill and not his speed. He knows he can't just keep running from the Black Flash forever, so he runs to the end of time, when there IS no forever, and where there can be no Death because there is no Life by which to measure it.

Also, before this issue, the speedsters had discovered the Speed Force, but it was still largely foreign to them, with Max Mercury hyper-meditating and getting even closer to it, but never entering it fully. Wally, who several issues before was wallowing about being powerless and alone forever, about being a useless, overgrown child with more in common with a track team than the Justice League, has gained such confidence in himself and his abilities that he runs in to the Speed Force to retrieve Linda, because he knows he can run back out.

In the final analysis, what I'm saying here is this: there is an ever-expanding group of writers who are afraid to tackle comics for what they can be, to touch on fresh, and frankly, mature ideas. The industry is at a similar place to the early '80s, where by and large, the books have no depth, and are there merely to continue to grind on sworn fans. It is time for another revolution, now that Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have sort of fallen off the radar.

What makes writers so afraid of the unknown? What better place is there for narrative experimentation than a comic book? Hell, Grant Morrison's Final Crisis was about the entire universe realizing that they were all fictional characters and fighting against the enemy, which was a blank page.

How fucking rad is that?

I'm sorry for singling out Mark Waid and naming other names, but honestly, they're going to get a paycheck this week for writing comics, and I'm not, so I don't feel too bad. It'd just be nice if this blog reminds writers at large that there's no reason to run the book into the unknown. Because you know you can always run back.

Nick Philpott is a playwright and comic book fan/sometimes author living in Athens, Ohio. His best time for the mile is 12m 36s, and he's fucking proud of it.

POST SCRIPT: For the other side of the debate coin, re: The Flash, check out Siskoid's blog about The Return of Barry Allen (8/1/07) ...

Seeing the Strings

Hello, friends and lovers!

Sorry for the long hiatus from this blog. I'm currently in graduate school and several projects have taken precedence over my comic book musings this quarter. Plus, I'm in the process of courting a guest writer to join Metropolis Is Actually Chicago for at least one post -- and courting takes time ... not to mention flowers, copious text messaging and pleading over beers. In short, I've been otherwise disposed these past few weeks and I apologize. I'm going to make it up to my two followers (and potential visitors) by doing a long post now, one concerned with comics' relationship to theatrical performance. Hope it proves fun for you guys!

I am in school for playwriting, but my obsessive relationship with comic book heroes started about the same time my love of theatre popped up. I attribute this to my glorious joint discovery of MGM musicals and "Batman: The Animated Series." (Age eight was a great year for Sarah Bowden.) In both outlets, I saw miraculous things happening. On "Batman," guys made out of clay and men with literally frozen hearts were constantly trying to take over Gotham City with giant robots, somehow fueled onward by the walking drug addiction metaphors and morality tales their masters represented. And only Batman had smarts enough to stop their schemes! In "Singin' In the Rain," we got to see a speech therapy lesson turn into a show-stopping musical number. Heck, I got to see a guy ask a girl out through a ten-minute romp in a make-believe meadow, complete with fog! I could not believe how much fun dancing and beating people up looked like. And I wanted to be a part of both.

My parents quickly took me to see all the great musicals available in the local theatre scene: Guys and Dolls, South Pacific, Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, etc. Meanwhile, every afternoon I would park it in front of the TV to see what adventures lay in store for Batman; my parents even shucked out the cash to let me buy "Batman: The Animated Series" comic books. This gateway drug led to the purchase of regular Batman books, along with Spider-man, the X-Men and New Kids On the Block comics (which mostly involved Danny, Joey, Jordan and ... uh, the other one being chased by girls). I think my mom supported my interest in theatre more than my fascination with the Caped Crusader and his print pals. But at heart, I think both things were fulfilling the same need in me, so she needn't have worried.

Let me explain by way of giving an example:

This past weekend, I saw a theatrical adaptation of the graphic novel Skyscrapers of the Midwest in Columbus, Ohio. Now I've never read the novel, but a colleague thought I might be interested in seeing its stage counterpart because I'm my program's resident comic nerd. It's not something I'm particularly proud of for a lot of reasons (primarily because I love Shakespeare and Maria Fornes, too, and nobody ever seems to talk with that side of my personality these days), but I can't hide my love for comic artwork and stories, or what I view as the important cultural contribution comics affect under the guise of "trash reading."

Anyway, I went to the play and found it to be maybe too close an adaptation of the graphic novel, i.e., there wasn't much in it that was inherently dramatic. By dramatic, I mean, there was little in the way of onstage conflict between characters (conflict being set up in the following example: A wants a grapefruit, but B's blocking the kitchen door; A needs to get B out of the way to get what A wants, and so uses a series of tactics to get around the obstacle B is presenting). There was not much of a plot or consequences for what was going on in Skyscrapers. And not many of the scenes were tied together in a narrative way. The play was more like a series of graphic short stories or vignettes. Which is fine, but it means very little happened that I could understand or describe in a tangible way to someone who hadn't seen it. Everything just felt important with a capital I, as opposed to engrossing or enlightening. (Basically, I felt stupid for just not getting how the images onstage stacked up.) And in my book, that's the hallmark of deadly theatre; theatre that doesn't let me know what it means by telling a good story is excluding me as an audience member. That condescension and withholding is a large part of the reason the general public doesn't like theatre or only goes to musicals, which entertain them and give them an obvious story to follow. I say all this not to slam Skyscrapers, which is an original work (rare to see these days), and should be applauded its excellent production elements and solid ensemble cast. I say all the above to prepare readers for what was actually special about the play: its brief translations of comic booky-ness into something that lived onstage.

Comic books are inherently theatrical. Like in good dramatic writing, comics use your mind to complete pictures. They take you places you've never been before; they show you one thing and then turn that thing into something else entirely -- right before your very eyes. And they do all this through a unique combination of style and substance we playwrights term the "artist's voice." This is more or less my program's definition of theatricality, and comic books play with perspective, conflict, dialogue and philosophy in a similar manner. Comic books are inherently theatrical.

I've been saying this for years, but had yet to find a good drama proving this, until halfway through watching this play. "Watchmen" made an okay movie, but it didn't transport me as easily as it did Dr. Manhattan. Spider-man: Turn Off the Dark is a mess of stage show, from what I hear. It assumes that rigging people to fly and then flashing them in front of audiences' faces will make up for lackluster storytelling and match the visual delight of impossible web-slinging acrobatics on the page. (Newsflash: it won't. Look at Peter Parker fly through the Manhattan skyline in his books. His anatomy and movements make no sense half the time; if you think artists are depicting his movements realistically, then you need to get your eyes checked. Or get a refund from Julie Taymor, who really sold you some shit. Because I cannot see the value in taking the cartoony zip of Spider-man and planting it dead onstage; seems to suck all the life out of the character to me if he can't do the impossible and bend like a graceful pretzel. Frankly, it takes some of the strange wonder out of his spider powers for me. If you can't find a way to translate that wonder to the stage, count me out of ever seeing your musical.)

In comic book art, you never see the strings. Onstage or in spectacle-obsessed amusement park rides, you ALWAYS see the strings, and they will NEVER BE ANYTHING BUT STRINGS. That's what makes such fare less enjoyable than the comic-reading experience -- you're never fully in it, there's no magical transformation of the spectacle. Unlike in the wonderful world of superheroes, where people are resurrected from the dead every five minutes, everything is what it appears to be. Unless theatre artists use those strings I mentioned to their advantage. If they allow those strings to ignite your imagination, engage you in filling in the blanks and learn something while you do it, they've achieved good theatricality.

Skyscrapers showed me two good theatricality moments, and proved itself worthy of my time:

1. The first time we the protagonist's little brother (Randy, I think?), he was carrying a stuffed animal Tyrannosaurus Rex. He held it out and asked his older brother, "Do you think Rex could beat He-Man in a fight?" The protagonist wouldn't answer, and so Randy went on to spin a tale of what the fight looked like and how Rex triumphed. End scene. The next time we saw Randy, he was taking a bath before services on Sunday morning. And with him was Rex, whom he again complimented for his imagined feats of derring-do. Only this time Rex was a man in a man in a T-Rex mascot head and claws, gussied up in a pair of sweatpants, tail sticking out the back, and a Team Adidas jacket from the 1980s. And he was washing Randy's hair. And as Randy plotted to blow up church by carpet-bombing the building, Rex climbed into the bathtub, turned it into an airplane, by extending his arms out like wings, and threw invisible dino bombs out the side window. A nearby Foley artists provided the whistling sounds for the bombs and ridiculous action movie explosions projected onto a screen provided context for what Randy imagined the destruction of the church, the elementary school and the house of "that kid Kirby I hate" to be.The audience LOVED every single second of this sequence. Not just because it was ridiculous, but because it showed us how Randy viewed the world, after exposing us to what the world actually looked like, in his conversation with his brother. In the boy's mind, Rex is a kung-fu king who beats up wolves and Satan and blowws up buildings. To the rest of the world, Rex is a doll, and Randy's running around the house, screaming about his fighting prowess. In the span of two scenes, we see one reality replaced by another, magical one. The carpet-bombing scene wouldn't be nearly as sweet if we didn't see Randy's aspiration to it in the He-Man scene. Without that first scene, we wouldn't understand what the second scene means to Randy. And that context is what makes good theatre. Images are built on top of one another to help an audience draw a conclusion about a person's perspective or goal (here, proving Rex can fight).

Good comics do this, too. I could toss off a million examples (Batwoman: Elegy and Blankets are the first two that spring to mind), but I'd prefer to stay in the realm of theatre and demonstrate how, unequivocally, Skyscrapers moved from creating one nice bit of theatricality, to PROVING why comic books on the page have all the theatricality a person could ask for ...

2. During the first act of the play, a storyline was told in comic panels on the projection screen. An abusive deadbeat (who looked like a cat) bedded and abandoned a casual hook-up, who then followed him to his house, where he was working on his truck. As a series of panels appeared parallel to one another onscreen, actors offstage provided the voices of the boy and girl (theatrical in itself because we had to match their voices with what was happening onscreen without explanation). The girl begged him to forgive her for being needy in the wee hours of the morning and the boy shrugged her off. She touched his arm, and then the screen went completely white-blank. The male actor offstage screamed in pain. The panels returned. The boy was holding his hand. The actor yelled that the girl had broken his fingers. The actress apologized. The screen flashed blank again. The actress screamed in pain. Then the panels returned, showing the girl holding her head and running to her car so she could escape the maniac who just socked her in the head with a wrench.

It was in watching this sequence that I was able to define EXACTLY WHAT it is that makes comics theatrical. The play demonstrated it in those white flashes. What makes comics theatrical on the page, and therefore useful on the stage as drama, is that little strip of white space between each panel. That little strip allows your mind to create the images that move you from one panel to the next. We didn't need to see the boy hitting the girl; we created that image in our heads, we found the meaning of the white space ourselves and didn't need it spoon-fed to us. We understood what was going on between the panels because the artists gave us just enough clues to participate in the work. I can't think of another reading medium that asks for that level of engagement and participation from its audience. And that involvement is why I'm mad about comics.

But how does that realization relate to my love of theatre and the old-timey musicals which ignited that love, you may ask. I think it has everything to do with the white space translation I just talked about. Every song in a musical stands in for dialogue. In "Singin' In the Rain," Gene Kelly doesn't just announce he's in love after dropping Debbie Reynolds at her front door in a rainstorm. No, dammit, he sings about it! He dances about it! And he never, ever flat-out announces he's in love. He allows us to draw that conclusion. He talks about being ready for love and having the sun in his heart. He commands the rain to keep pouring because he's in the middle of a happy refrain, all relating to love. And we learn something about him because we're smart enough to see the guy's besotted in more ways than one.

Even as a kid, I never thought what made musicals special was all the flashy tap numbers and eye-popping costumes. What made musicals special was the fact that I could imagine what the characters were supposed to be doing while they were singing and dancing. The songs were the white space between the panels, the getting from point A to B; they moved the story and expressed the unspoken, but they weren't what was literally happening to the characters in the moment. I liked that in-between space. And I liked translating the emotions depicted in song on my own, then running to my parents to discuss my observations. Soon that led us to seeing straight plays together, and led to my long love affair with subtext and staging techniques.

Because theatre's always been a vehicle for getting me to think about what's in front of me, and expressing myself. It's my chosen field because theatre empowers me to think, respond and act in relation to the world around me. So does the white space.

See? Mom didn't need to worry about my brain rotting from comic book violence and ridiculousness. Like those MGM classics, comics books helped me get to where I am today, questioning the value of art and the world surrounding me.

The Man Without

When Daredevil was unleashed upon the world in 1964, he was intended to be one of many street-level heroes defending New York City. The cover to his first issue even draws parallels with Marvel's flagship street fighter, Spider-man, as shown here:

But notice that even as the cover creates a direct parallel between Daredevil and Spiderman (both swing around to bop bad guys, both are destined for popularity, both cart around guilty consciences the size of their barrel chests), it challenges you to guess what makes Daredevil different from every other superhero. If there are clues on this cover for an uninitiated reader, I can't find them. The closest to a red flag I can find is that our hero wears sunglasses in his secret identity--though Matt Murdock's not introduced as Daredevil until you turn the issue's pages, so you wouldn't find that indicator suspicious or indicative. You wouldn't even know he's Daredevil from looking at this cover, and that's an important spike for me.

Because Matt Murdock is blind. Daredevil is not, so far as the public knows. So what makes him truly remarkable as a superhero is a secret, a well-guarded one, which gives the whole comic a passing narrative that leaves a lot to be desired, in my opinion.

But let me back up. During the 1960s and 1970s, Marvel rose to prominence by tempering fantastic superheroics with readers' real-life concerns. Hence, Spiderman's struggle to make ends meet and save his aunt's house after the death of his bread-winning uncle; or, Peter Banner's struggle to control his temper in order to live up to the responsibilities thrust on him by work and his girlfriend, both of which keep him from "Hulking out;" or the Fantastic Four's efforts to keep it together as a family when pushed into the public arena because of their adventures. Stan Lee's comics were meant to engage teenage readers who felt alienated by the adult world, while being too grown up to take comfort in the thought that a man can fly. Lee had basically been handed the creative control of Marvel in the 1950s, after DC had reinvented the superhero for the Atomic Age. He followed suit by addressing darker issues and grabbing an older audience for his books in the turbulent sixties. Daredevil was the result of this experiment, as were the alcoholic Iron Man and the ever-persecuted X-Men.

Created by writer-editor Lee, artist Bill Everett and designed in part by Jack Kirby, Daredevil's hook seems to be his protectorship of gritty Hell's Kitchen as well as his deeply rooted Catholicism. Cops walk rough beats, they're dedicated to their neighborhoods. Daredevil's specific placement makes him feel like a cop to me; he's a man with a mission for his people, and he'll be brutal if need be, holding tight to the righteousness of his blue-collar Irish religion meanwhile. Add that to the fact that he didn't exclusively fight costumed supervillains, but also dealt with poverty and other social problems, and you can understand how Daredevil fits into Marvel's "real world" mode.

But none of this character motivation nitty-gritty and realistic setting stuff makes Daredevil inherently special. What makes him special is that he's differently-abled. Lee announces as much on the cover by asking you to guess what makes him different from his cohorts. Bringing a blind superhero into the Marvel stable must have been an unique thing to do in the 1960s, when the rights of disabled individuals were not general concerns, as they have been (moreso, anyway) since the creation of the American With Disabilities Act in the 1990s. But what does it mean to make a blind man a superhero? How exactly will his stories be different?

In the first issue of Daredevil, we learn his origin. As a child, he rescues an old blind man from being hit by a truck. But no good deed goes unpunished, right? That explains why a canister of some radioactive substance falls from the truck and blinds Matt for life. How that works, I can't even begin to guess--what I can say, because the writers say it, is that Matt gains superpowers due to this radioactive exposure. (Because that happened a lot after the A-bomb got dropped.) His hearing, sight and touch all become more sensitive, and allow him to develop a radar of sorts -- a radar that makes it possible for him to fight crime through feats of acrobatic daring-do.

I'll get to how that works in a moment. But think about this situation in another way. People often claim that when one of your senses is impaired, the others become stronger. Because he's blinded, Matt's other senses become heightened. Regardless of how irradiated his eyes become, if he hadn't been blinded, he wouldn't have become super-sensitive. You need the tragedy in order to explain the powers. Without his blindness, Daredevil would not have superpowers. His blindness fuels his superpowers. In effect, his disability IS his superpower.

Now maybe I'm thinking this way because I've been hard of hearing since birth, and a large part of my identity is defined by the positives surrounding a lack of something in my life. But I think the Daredevil comic invites these musings by the way Lee asks you to guess his specialness. Certainly, the hero's remarkable abilities are tied distinctly to his lack of something, and at his creation, that must have created a dynamic and new point of view for readers. Maybe it even alleviated some assumptions about what the disabled are capable of. Still I would argue Daredevil is not a very good spokesman/role model for the disabled. Largely because no one in his world thinks a blind man can be a crazy devil acrobat, so assumptions remain about blind people and actually HELP Matt Murdock continue his nighttime activities and mask his special disability.

But I feel Daredevil also misses out on a positive opportunity for another, maybe more fixable reason. Check out what Daredevil's radar looks like, as displayed in an earlier issue of Daredevil:

After Daredevil enters a room, we learn through narration that being in the dark is an advantage to him, since he lives in darkness. Instead of peepers, he uses radar. And in the final panel of these three, we see what Daredevil's radar looks like. Which bothers me. We SEE his foes as clear BODIES. Now if you've studied radar at all, you know it was originally fueled by the return of electromagnetic waves to a transmitter, usually radio waves. These days, it's used by air traffic controllers and weather forecasters; in special circumstances, lidar -- or radar fueled by visible light -- can be used, so I guess the image is clearer that way. The point I want to make by being technical is this: Radar is NOT sight, the way it's drawn here. It's something else. Radar isn't precise; beam range/beam path can be affected, and noise interference can occur. It's not a pretty little picture. And radar's fueled by things that are not necessarily internalized in the human body. Bats, sure. Humans--huh?

Of course, stretching credibility is something comics always do. I mean, Peter Parker gets bit by a radioactive spider, and THAT gives him superpowers -- meanwhile the FDA's warned against importing milk from Japan after its nuclear disaster. I don't mean to be a fuddy-duddy taking issue with fantasy powers, but Marvel's missing out by making Daredevil's radar something discernible, something understandable to the human eye. They don't let us into a blind man's world that way, they impose our seeing world on him, and force Matt Murdock into a passing narrative not of his own making (his acting as a sighted superhero aside), where it's good he hides the benefits of his blindness, where being blind means you're not capable of accomplishing great feats or experiencing the world in your own unique way. Which would be great fodder for drama (I'm thinking about how it affects Matt's every day life as a blind man), but in all the Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack and Kevin Smith trade paperbacks I've read, this conflict is never addressed! Matt seems to have no problem being judged for his disability, nor does he have any problem crafting dual "abled" and disabled identities. For a man who's been blind most of his life, he never seems to think about how it affects him, or how it gave him a weird special sight.

And sadly, Daredevil's radar hasn't changed from conventional sight in Daredevil's modern age. In fact, once Frank Miller reinvented the character during the 1980s, Daredevil's senses became heightened almost to the level of Superman's. He can hear sounds blocks away, he can gauge the time a person left a room based on the dispersion of their perfume. Sure, his radar can be messed with, but the strength of his senses allows him to touch-read the imprints of a pen on paper. So now the blind man doesn't even need braille -- effectively, he's no longer a blind man, if he can "see" enough to read a paper in the first place.

And artists have run with these heightened radar sensations. Alex Maleev, arguably the greatest contemporary Daredevil artist working today, completes an entirely silent issue in Daredevil volume 2, issue 28. Mostly he uses Matt's radar for detective work. But Matt's senses are so sharp, the radar has no defect. It is sight -- only sight -- like our sight. You can see his radar sense highlighted in one panel, outlined pink in the second scan here:

This issue tells a brilliant visual story. But how naive is it to assume a disabled character's senses work/look just like ours? Would sight look the same to a blind man as it does to us? Would images be interpreted in the same way? Do we need to understand that in order to get the story being told? And how big a violation of Lee's difference set-up has years of radar artwork been?

One thing I can tell you ... Our hero masks his disability, and so it's hidden in the artwork as well. So the youth Lee meant to reach out to, people hungry for different struggles, people who wanted a voice to be given to the disempowered -- well, they get the same old, same old with Daredevil everytime. He sees the world as we do, not as a blind man does. So excuse me, he's lost his cache. Because much as I love Daredevil as a keystone Marvel character, I can't get behind his lack of progression since the 1960s. His blindness seems to make no impact on his world, and that is not realistic, and makes me question the value of this different character.

(In fact, his blindness becomes a lame cover, a negative thing that proves how limited disabled people are -- writer Brian Michael Bendis uses the excuse of blindness to protect the outing of Daredevil's secret identity several times during his Out storyline. Maybe this is supposed to be ironic, because we know the truth and the public doesn't, but Bendis has it both ways, doesn't he? He reinforces assumptions while claiming to tear them down.)

For a better take on how artists demonstrate a disabled person's outlook, check out David Mack's Daredevil: Parts of the Hole. In that story, Daredevil falls in love with a deaf woman, and Mack uses playfulness of line and bizarre set-ups of dialogue to show us how the deaf piece together the sentences strung around and by their bodies. All in all, it creates a powerful statement about body language, its importance in a hearing-impaired culture, and how limiting it can be when you need to chase words coming across someone's lips or across a page:

What a pity more Daredevil artwork isn't like this -- isn't challenging our notions of what blindness "looks like," or showing what the impaired experience is to those who want to learn and understand.

Because frankly, in my mind, Daredevil is unremarkable. He becomes unremarkable when writers and artists don't engage with his disability head-on. That's sad, especially since Lee boldly challenged us to see Daredevil's difference in his first appearance.

Eye of the Beholder

This man is blind.
And he has superpowers.



Is it possible to be both extraordinarily-abled and disabled and still stay true to a blind person's experience? We'll find out in the next post!

All About Equal Opportunity

Here at "Metropolis Is Actually Chicago," I'm all about equality, so it's important to point out that Ed Benes is popular for his male figures as well, and that those figures are just as out of proportion as those depicted in Birds of Prey. Who's the audience for these beefcakes? Men? Women? Impressionable youth who might want to grow up to have biceps bigger than their heads?

Perhaps someday I'll do a post about the male anatomy in comics, because God knows it's just as insane as depictions of the female body.

Nobody Does It Better Than the Birds of Prey

(For an idea of the plot of the piece I'll be discussing here, check out this link: http://www.comicvine.com/birds-of-prey-of-like-minds-of-like-minds/37-204656/)

It's true that I referenced a ridiculously badass yet physically impossible and sexualized comics cover in my last post as a hook of sorts for this entry, but I didn't mean it as a weird judgment of the work. It's just that everything in that drawing highlights what I want to talk about in Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds -- specifically that sexual and badass fantasies are fulfilled in this work WHILE writer Gail Simone continually humanizes her characters AND turns the tables on a weird captivity fantasy by allowing her heroines to hold most of the cards.

But who is this mash-up meant for?

Is it meant for men who look to their comics not only for oggle fests but also a black and white definition of the male as protector and women as physically pleasing and available once protected? Or is it meant for the women who love comic book adventures but hate the festishization of violence against females, a la "Women In Refrigerators?" (For more information on that concept, check out this website, actually created by Gail Simone herself: http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/)

Simone and her artist Ed Benes stick a neat balance somewhere between these two tastes. Benes does it by creating the type of ridiculously cartoon exaggerations that won his visceral work acclaim and lots of male fans, I'm sure. Check out this cover and get an eyeful of breasts and muscles (Black Canary's abs are amazing, and Barbara Gordon's boobs are barely covered!):

Or take a gander at the provocative positioning of Oracle on this cover, who's just fallen out of her wheelchair into the most cheesecake position possible (but is still slinging batarangs, God bless her):

Meanwhile, Simone errs on the side of the ladies' fan base by showcasing an understandably terrifying situation and still allowing women to act as a strong force in the middle of a kidnapping shitstorm. The rescuer of our captive, after all, is not male:

Simone tells us everything we need to know about Huntress in this one page. She'll crush your windpipe if you cross her, but she'll still take the time to check in on her girlfriend first. I can't remember the last time I saw Batman checking in on someone while kicking butt in a comic book. Besides, being a loner is a decidedly male attribute in comics, one that Huntress shares before joining the Birds of Prey superhero team. But it's the kindness and togetherness expressed by and between the female characters in this book that makes Of Like Minds feel fresh and distinctly aimed at women, even moreso than its emphasis on Black Canary's ability to withstand mental torture and turn it around on the blackmailers who've captured her.

Sure, strength is the hook. But the development of a female support system and solid female characters is what keeps people reading. Both men and women. Because the contrast between what's known as decidedly fantastic masculine ass-kickery and the assumed and dreamed sexiness exploited by Benes' artwork (so many thigh and ass shots here, it gets a little grating) isn't enough to captivate -- a lot of writers and artists can do that.

If those aims aren't nestled right up against the reality of characters reacting to danger in the moment and making the stakes in relationships with friends and family apparent, then there's no reason to keep reading. Otherwise, you'd have a violent cheesecake book. Here, Simone presents us with women who have wide-ranging personalities -- Oracle, formerly Batgirl and confined to a wheelchair but okay with that, to the point that she's becoming a bit of a information vulture, aka worse than Big Brother; Black Canary, vulnerable when around her gadabout boyfriend Green Arrow and his liberal propaganda, but well-equipped to withstand torture after being dragged through the mud by author Mike Grell on that count once before; and Huntress, an insecure loner who can't fit into any group -- somehow these women manage to work together and function as a family, despite their various weaknesses, interests and blind spots. And that's what makes the adventure penned by Simone remarkable, because she explores their various traits and connections, gives their conversations a history and their trials a reality that continues past the adventures themselves, making them true women and not playthings or masculinized females.

It's not for nothing that when we first meet Huntress, her vigilante actions are tempered by her appreciation for the baby she's just saved ("I wish you could smell how good this baby smells," she says). Nor is it surprising when Barbara spends a two-issue arc hashing out her PTSD after Black Canary's rescue. Simone treats these woman as real women dealing with situations that would have long-lasting effects on any real woman. She shows us their worries and human frailty, and thus takes a potentially exploitative situation (kidnapping and torture funneled through hyper-masculine attacks and muscles), and tempers it with a female perspective. So every reader gets the best of both worlds, and in the end I think Simone's world wins over Benes' comic fantasy.

If only because Simone allows this panel to conflate the appearance of ra-ra hyper-masculine folk with questions about sexual identity:

It always helps to shade your feminist/woman's perspective agenda in humor!