IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S .

• •

The origins of America's comic superheroes lie in the 1950s,

writes Michael Harrington, but Batman, Superman

and Wonder Woman remain up to date

BATMAN, SUPERMAN and Wonder Woman are over half a century old. Along with other comic book superheroes they have achieved a commanding position in our popular culture. That has often been remarked upon, frequently deplored, but not much examined. Heroes and villains with fantastic powers are not new. They are found in the most ancient tales and myths. It is odd, however, that they should appear, or reappear in the America of the late 1930s; it is odder still that they should continue into the present.

At present, the comic heroes are probably the most widely recognised fictional characters ever produced by our culture: Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, the big three comic book heroes, have shown more dura- bility than any of the others, having inspired a long line of comic writers and artists. Perhaps this is because none of them is as simple and straight- forward as they appear at first sight. Each has a different, and strange, psy- chological, political and even religious character.

In his most sophisticated incarna- tion, Superman, for example, is a paro- dy of Christianity: he is what Jesus Christ would have been like, had he the sense to have been born a red- blooded, all-American boy. Not that he began this way. Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuster, two Jewish American teenagers, devised Superman in the mid-1930s, and in his early adventures Superman exhibited a political colour that reflected American isolationist sentiment, as well as the liberal ideal- ism of Roosevelt's New Deal.

In his very first outing Superman discov- ers a plot in Washington by corrupt politi- cians. He overhears a certain Senator Barrows speaking to a wealthy foreign- looking type: 'There is no doubt about it, the Bill will be passed before the full impli- cations are realised. Before any remedial steps can be taken America will be embroiled with Europe.'

`Fine,' says the foreign type, 'we'll take care of you financially for this.' To Super- man, this is tantamount to treason, of course, and he vows revenge.

In another early story, Superman foils a munitions manufacturer who is promoting a war in Latin America; in still another, a mine-owner obliges miners to labour in dangerous conditions until Superman com- pels him to experience these conditions himself. Drunks, wife-batterers and gam- blers also received his attention in early episodes, and readers could have been for- given for assuming that Superman was in fact an advanced form of super-social worker.

In January 1940, Superman began to take on more overtly political tasks, appearing frequently as an international police officer. In one story, entitled 'How Superman Would End the War' Superman makes his first trip to Europe, physically grabs Hitler and Stalin, and hauls them before an international court. A somewhat unlikely judge declares, 'Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, we pronounce you guilty of modern history's greatest crime — unpro- voked aggression against defenceless coun- tries.'

But naivety was not to last much longer. When first the second world war, and then the Cold War, came to America, they set off a great boom in comics (among comics fans the period from 1938 to the later 1940s is called 'the Golden Age'). More heroes were created. Superman, a social worker in the 1930s, evolved into a fantasy guardian of the world order: an all-powerful, benevolent, and at times slightly portly-looking conservative.

Superman's curious pseudo-reli- gious character is never explicit in the se 1950s comics or anywhere else, On the contrary, Superman's 'managers' over the years have gone to great trouble to rule out anything 'supernat- ural'. Everything is supposed to have a scientific explanation even though 90 per cent of the science is transpar- ently bogus.

Yet consider: if Superman does not come from Heaven, he certainly comes from the heavens — the dying planet Krypton. His father on Kryp- ton (Jor-El) has sent him to Earth, as an infant, with a mission to use his special powers for the good of human- ity. He lands in the American Mid- West, where he is found and adopted by a nice American couple, Mr and Mrs Kent. They live in Smallville, an idyllic American town where he enjoys a pastoral childhood and youth.

At a certain age — it seems to be about 18 — Superman feels a call to leave home and he travels north. How it happens dif- fers according to which version of the story is being told (Superman's life story is retold about every four years, since this is how long a comics-reading 'generation' is reck- oned to last). In most versions, young Superman, or Superboy, hears a message from Jor-El (his heavenly father) instruct- ing him with regard, to his mission. There- after, the hero begins his career as a public saviour, defending America against its ene- mies. He doesn't have his own message or teaching, however; American values are the right values even as they stand, he merely wants to defend them.

Oddly enough, in more recent incarna- tions, Superman-as-Christ has become a more palpable theme. Certainly it featured in the powerful and even beautiful Super- man film, starring Christopher Reeves and written by Mario Puzo, author of The God- father. More recently, in a new comic series, 'Death of Superman,' Superman's death is actually followed by his resurrec- tion. In this storyline, Superman dies, sav- ing the world from a ghastly super-villain called Doomsday. Yet some time after Superman's death people start to report seeing him. Eventually, some friends of his break into his tomb. They find it empty.

Of course, in accordance with the con- ventions of the comics, the resurrected Superman continues his career as though nothing has happened. He still forms the eternal triangle with Lois Lane and his alter ego, Clark Kent. In this way the paro- dy of a religious myth merges into soap opera and even romantic comedy, a uniquely American mix.

If Superman represents the idealised American hero, Batman, on the other hand, is a more tortured soul. Most at home in the shadows, Batman is a gothic figure. He also differs from most other comic book heroes. He has no special pow- ers, he cannot fly like Superman or Won- der Woman, and if you fire bullets at him he tends to fall over. Yet his extraordinary agility and his use of ropes and gadgets make him appear as air-mobile as the oth- ers; he also has private technological resources to rival the Pentagon.

Originally created by Bob Kane in 1939, Batman was always an emotional cripple. Bruce Wayne (Batman's real name) was a child when both of his parents were mur- dered in front of him by a low-class crimi- nal. From this horror he never recovered, and his whole life has become a quest for revenge.

Oddly enough, Batman's most popular enemies, such as The Joker and Two Face, are also emotionally deformed characters. Thus are the Batman adventures essentially struggles between lunatics, set against a background of normal urban society. It is no accident that the Batman comic style was much influenced by the camera angles and the patterns of light and shade in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, the most talked-about film of the 1940s.

Robin, 'the Boy Wonder', was created in 1942 to give Batman some company. A girl- friend, at least in those days, was out of the question. Heroes like Batman and Super- man have to be celibate in accordance with the most ancient of superstitions about warriors and their power. Today, of course, a young boy companion, even if he is a ward, is far more questionable than a girl- friend and Batman would have no end of trouble from the Gotham City social ser- vices department.

In the traditional Batman cycle, as in the traditional Superman cycle, the same vil- lains have to come back time and again because villains who can offer a contest to a superhero are rare and must be pre- served. So Lex Luthor or The Joker, not to mention the delightful Catwoman, can only be defeated in the short term. They are as indestructible as the hero and their fights become a kind of dramatised ritual.

But Batman too can be updated. At pre- sent he is the most popular of the comic book heroes: three recent Batman films have broken box office records and given a huge boost to comic sales, with all the usual 'spin-off products. A recent treat- ment of him is Frank Miller's influential The Dark Knight Returns. This is what is known as a graphic novel; a kind of hard- back comic. In it, Frank Miller brought Batman into touch with contemporary social reality. In his version of the story, Batman has retired from crime-fighting and is a 50-year-old drifting into alco- holism. Shaken up by an outbreak of urban terrorism, he comes back into action, somewhat creakier than before but more ruthless and angry. Liberal voices in the media condemn his actions, and the new female police commissioner puts out a war- rant for his arrest. Batman evolves into a middle-aged, embittered, right-wing vigi- lante, almost as much of an outlaw as the villains he hunts down. He leads his own strange pack of cut-throats at night through the sewers of Gotham City.

But if the origins of Batman and Super- man both lie in conservative myths about America — one way or another, both are saviours who will restore traditional values — Wonder Woman is different again. Even in 1941 she was a feminist icon. When DC comics tried in the 1960s to rejig the character without any super-powers, they provoked a storm of protest, including an angry public letter from Gloria Steinem. Yet she is also a pornographic character, a bondage fantasy who seems also to appeal to a kind of submerged and vacuous paganism.

Wonder Woman was created by a well- known psychologist named William Moul- ton Marston, author of several academic textbooks and inventor of the lie detector. It was a bold stroke to come up with a female hero in 1941, but it was an instant success. However, she was more than just a simple, old-fashioned, good girl; Marston knew all about the erotic subtext. Speaking of the predominantly male readership, he said, 'Give them an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves!'

Wonder Woman is the most frankly supernatural of the comic book heroes. She is the equivalent of the Amazonian princess, Diana, who is immortal. She resembles the pagan gods of ancient Greece who are presented as real beings. Like Superman, she too leaves home to fight in the war for America, 'the last citadel of democracy and equal rights for women'. Marston thus brought about a breathtaking fusion of feminism and patri- otism and kinky sex. As Les Daniels, author of DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favourite Comic Book Heroes tells us, 'Wonder Woman's adventures were increasingly dominated by images of female figures bound by ropes and chains. A short story published in 1942 featured 15 separate panels depicting someone in bondage.' In those days the moral authori- ties, though quick to pounce on nudity or any depiction of a man and woman in bed together, were quite naive and innocent about other things.

These ingredients can be quite accept- able if mixed with other material. Unfortu- nately, in the current comic series the charm and laughter seem to have gone out of Wonder Woman, and all we get now are storms and stress and battles and apoca- lypse. Perhaps as women do get more pow- erful in real life, the charm of a woman superhero will eventually wane for the (mostly male) readers of comic books.

Yet although Wonder Woman, like all of the comic heroes, achieved her archetypal form in the 1940s, what is most striking about her is how little she has changed. Neither Superman, nor Batman, nor she have altered beyond recognition; their new roles seem mostly like variations on estab- lished themes. Far from fading, they seem destined to stay with us in the cinema, on television and in the newsagents. It looks as though the Americans, not having inherit- ed a mythology, have invented their own and sold it to the rest of the world.