Posts Tagged superman
Underwear On The Outside
In Superman: Secret Identity #3, the Man of Steel wonders if his costume might be a little snug. It’s the latest of god-knows-how-many updated retellings of Superman’s origin story, so we get to see him wearing his costume in public for the first time – uh, again – and muttering: “All right, Clark. Don’t think about how tight it is.”
As far as catchphrases go, it’s no “Up, up, and away!”, is it? When even Superman is worried that he looks stupid in his iconic, entire-industry-inspiring costume, you can understand how difficult difficult it is to wear your underwear on the outside.
The popularity of superheroes used to be able to force anyone into costume. In his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (2006), Peter Coogan uses a character called The Scorpion to illustrate this trend:
“The Scorpion, created by Howard Chaykin, exemplifies this shift. The Scorpion’s adventures were set just before WWII, and the character himself was a pulpy soldier of fortune with some science fiction elements. The Scorpion debuts without a costume, wearing a leather jacket, flight scarf, riding boots, and armed with pistols. A new creative team was brought on after the second issue, and the Scorpion was made over, appearing in the third and final issue in a blue-and-orange cowled affair sporting a large scorpion chevron.”
Like I wrote when talking about Power Girl and her costume’s notorious cleavage window, you’re currently more likely to see superhero comics apologising for oulandish outfits than embracing them. The first example I can remember was a decade or so after the Scorpion’s crisis, when John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad ditched their costumes altogether.
The Suicide Squad was a team consisting of various villains and sociopaths, forced into good deeds by their government in order to reduce their prison terms. It was a serious espionage story with an alarmingly high body count. (At least it seemed high when back in 1987; now, a smattering of character deaths seem to be expected in even the most lighthearted superhero books.)
In time, the supervillains on the Squad ditched their costumes altogether, deciding on a more ‘serious’ look for their serious stories. I can see why. This year, DC released JSA Vs. Kobra. It’s a grim tale of global terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and suicide bombing that took itself absolutely stone-faced seriously – even while starring a character called Mister Terrific who has the words FAIRPLAY written down the sleeves of his jacket in giant letters.
I’ve spent my whole life honing my ability to suspend disbelief, and I still had to stifle a giggle at this yawning chasm between style and content.
For the non-comic-reading public, costumes can be an even harder sell. Recent superheroic TV shows don’t dare. Smallville is still clinging to its long-standing “no flights, no tights” policy for young Clark Kent. And NBC’s deservedly-maligned Heroes is happy to be one of the stupidiest shows on TV – but god forbid they’d ever put their characters in costume, because that would just look dumb, right?
Coogan suggests three elements to define a superhero: mission, powers, and identity. Costumes, he says, is an integral part of the latter – “iconic representations of the superhero identity”. Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins agreed, concreting the importance of Batman’s “theatricality” in the minds of the millions who saw it. However, it still required his costume to become practical military-style armour, rather than just bright fabric for symbolism alone. (Well, okay: symbolism and ease of impromptu dancing.)
The costumeless Suicide Squad later find themselves unwillingly involved in a major crossover called “War Of The Gods” in issue #58 (1991). Before they head off to battle angry mythological figures, they’re told to put their old costumes back on by the immortal antihero Black Adam:
“Everyone who has one should be in costume. [...] We go to fight gods and magic. Ceremonial garb has a value and should be worn.”
Maybe it’s that simple. Superman should remember this the next time he’s feeling shy.
Unreal Superheroes: “The one thing I can not do…”
The thought bubbles of the Superman story “Unreal” read like poetry once you take the pictures away:
I can defy the laws of gravity.
I can ignore the principles of physics.
I can breathe in the vacuum of space.
I can alter the building blocks of chemistry.
I can fly in the face of probability.
I can bring smiles of relief to a grateful populace.
But unfortunately…
…the one thing I can not do…
…is break free from the fictional pages where I live and breathe…
…become real during times of crisis…
…and right the wrongs of an unjust word.
A world, fortunately, protected by heroes of its own.
Does this story – by Steven T. Seagle and Duncan Rouleau – sound a little too sincere something that’s only two pages long? It’s because it belongs to DC Comics’ second volume of artists’ reactions to 9-11, released in 2002. It’s a fascinating cultural document of dozens of writers and artists struggling to make sense of the attacks. Some go for grand symbolism, and others for raw, personal moments. Some are genuinely moving; some are well-meaning but wince-inducing.
Because this is DC Comics, though, superheroes necessarily wind their way through many of these stories. For example, Superman helps children to symbolically rebuild twin towers with toy blocks. A kid draws his own superhero stories while waiting for news about his father. A godlike hand plays with superhero action figures around a glowing tower. Weirdest of all: Krypto, Superman’s superpowered dog, flies in a giant water-dish for the rescue dogs who’ve been looking for survivors.
The presence of these characters creates a conflict between heroic reality and heroic fantasy, and it’s never far from the surface of the page. In Brian K. Vaughn and Pete Woods’ story, “For Art’s Sake”, it’s the actual plot. It features a comic artist who doesn’t see the point in drawing superheroes any more. “…we’re sitting here telling meaningless stories about imaginary heroes,” he says, “while, out there, hundreds of real heroes are dead.”
Steven T. Seagal has dealt with some of these same questions of pesky reality in his autobiographical graphic novel It’s A Bird. In it, he explains how difficult he finds it to write Superman. “I’ve been thinking it over and the pieces don’t add up… the costume, the secret identity, the origin…” he says. “Superman doesn’t hold water in the real world.”
(I write about this odd Superman story, as well as Doctor Doom’s less-than-villainous reaction to the 9-11 attacks, over here.)
What I love about Seagle’s story in this volume, however, is that it draws attention to Superman’s fictional status without compromising his character. Even though it shows Superman as just pencil and ink, flat on the page, he’s still allowed his thought bubbles. We see him wishing he could travel to our world and offer us help.
In fact, it’s like a mirror-image of the volume’s cover. 
There, Superman is the one who appears three-dimensional. From the safe distance of his own fictional universe, he’s looking up with admiration at a two-dimensional representation of rescue workers – peering into a flat representation of our world, just like we peer down at his heroic deeds on the comic book page.
Superman simply says: “Wow.”
Elliot S! Maggin’s Lex Luthor
Elliot S! Maggin’s out-of-print Superman novel, Miracle Monday (1982), is brimming with joyfully odd ideas and wild, poetic tangents. Lex Luthor isn’t even the antagonist here – despite some time-travelling tourists, it’s really a Superman versus The Devil story – but Maggin’s Luthor steals every page on which he appears.
This Lex Luthor calls a press conference while he’s in jail to announce his inevitable breakout. He hides deadly scientific equipment by disguising it as modern art and selling it to respected museums. (For instance, “…the Whitney housed a corkscrew-nosed missile which could actually hold as many as six passengers while it tunnelled 12 miles underground.”) And he has dozens of alternate identities including journalists, doctors, and artists. This quirk allows Maggin to create the most (kinda-) convincing reason as to why Luthor, evil genius, never seems to realise that his arch-enemy looks an awful lot like the pesky reporter Clark Kent:
“It would probably have been a simple matter, had he chosen to do so, for Luthor to figure out what Superman’s secret identity was. Luthor did not think the information would do him any good. He assumed that Superman had the same sort of set up as Luthor had with his made-to-order people, and that if he were exposed, Superman would simply create new aliases.”
Luthor lists some of the men he’s suspected are just Superman in disguise – like Joe Namath, Muhammad Ali, and Bruce Wayne. He doesn’t understand that Clark Kent is much more than just a fake name, a cheap suit, and a pair of useless eyeglasses. Maggin’s Superman loves the Clark-persona he’s painstakingly constructed, valuing him just as much as “…he valued a human life.”
(Second prize for deft use of comic book logic goes to John Byrne. His Superman reboot transformed Luthor into from a mad scientist into a villainous businessman, and addressed the “but doesn’t Superman look a little familiar…?” conundrum early in his run. Again, it’s that Luthor can’t imagine anyone would think differently to him. When an underling reveals all the evidence that Clark and Superman are one and the same, Luthor belittles her: “I know that no man with the power of Superman would ever pretend to be a mere human!”)
DC Comics’ current Luthor has reverted back to a criminal mastermind, and one who takes himself very seriously considering he’s wearing a garish 1970s sci-fi battlesuit. I hope that Maggin’s Luthor – genius, prankster, unflinching smart-ass – reemerges one day, just to hear him whittle Superman’s nickname from “Supes” to “Soups” to “Chicken Noodle” again.
(Why the exclamation point in Elliot S! Maggin? Read Timothy Callahan’s lovely piece on Maggin for more.)