Reconstruction 8.4 (2008)
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Terrence R. Wandtke, ed. The Amazing, Transforming Superhero!: Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007. 254 pp. ISBN: 978-0-7864-3189-2. www.mcfarlandpub.com (800) 253-2187.
<1> Like all popular culture, superheroes reflect the attitudes, myths, and fears of their times. As a result, superheroes who enjoy longevity are periodically revised to keep step with changes in society. For example, a survey of the comic-book history of Batman (in continuous publication since 1939) would show significant changes in the series every five to ten years. In the introduction to this collection of essays on revisionism and superheroes, Terrence R. Wandtke argues that such revision cannot be called "evolution" as it is not linear. He categorizes four types of revisionism: additive (making small additions that enhance rather than disrupt the current trend of the series), fundamental (reshaping the superhero to meet changing audience expectations), conceptual (reworking not a series but the basic concepts of the genre, as Spider-man was a reworking of the teen sidekick), and critical (commenting on the comics by critics, scholars, and fans).
<2> When the words "revision" and "superhero" appear in the same sentence, a comic art scholar's mind often turns to the 1980's and two attention-grabbing graphic novels: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Perhaps because so much has already been written about these books, Wandtke does not include any articles which focus on them exclusively. However, Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen are used by several articles as touchstones for revisionism.
<3> Wandtke's own contribution to the volume is an essay on the sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again. While both graphic novels comment on comics and society in their revision of Batman and his friends, Wandtke shows that Miller has different aims in them. According to Wandtke, The Dark Knight Returns is a modernist text that presents and resolves a clear dialectic between Batman, a vigilante defying laws against superheroes, and Superman, a superhero co-opted by the establishment. The Dark Knight Strikes Again, however, is a postmodernist text that "seemed to essentialize the heroes and villains, creating flat characters and making everyone generally unsympathetic" (98-99). It avoids the clear demarcations of insider/outsider seen in the previous novel and marks a general unease about heroes and leaders in the 21st century.
<4> Both The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen present Americas in which superhero vigilantes are outlawed by the government. Audrey Anton analyzes a more recent text with the same motif, the Disney-Pixar film The Incredibles. She applies Friedrich Nietzsche's social dichotomy of the "noblemen," naturally talented people who should lead a society, and the "slaves," mediocre people who should follow. Under this view, the outlawing of "supers" by jealous humans in The Incredibles has undone the natural order. Things go further awry when Syndrome, an ordinary human with delusions of superiority, targets the retired supers. The Incredibles defeat Syndrome, but Anton is troubled by the ending of the film. Even though they have affirmed the value of supers, the Incredibles still try to pass as normal humans, "suggest[ing] that mediocrity still rules society" (225). Perhaps more than any other essay in the collection, Anton's discussion is long overdue and demands to be the subject of further academic analysis. Both readers and creators of superhero stories have struggled with how to address the inherent superiority of the "master race" of superhumans. Nietzsche seems to crop up frequently in these discussions, perhaps because his concept of the Übermensch is often translated as the "superman."
<5> One intriguing area of revisionism is "retroactive continuity" (or "retcon"). This is when writers approach a gap or apparent contradiction in a character's history as a creative challenge and find a way to resolve it, often redeeming noncanonical works. Jason Dittmer explores the retconning of an apocryphal Captain America. The patriotic superhero first set his shield against evil in 1941 when he was published by Timely Comics. He ceased publication in 1950 but was briefly revived (when the company was called Atlas Comics) in 1953-1954 as a commie-fighter. By 1964, Atlas has become Marvel, a company with a new line of superheroes. The Mighty Avengers find Captain America frozen in a block of ice, where he has been since 1944. What, then, of those other Captains of the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were replacements, of course, taking over the mantle so that the country would not lose its flag-wearing hero. Dittmer focuses on one of these retconned replacements, the 1953 anti-Communist Captain America, who was revived to reflect liberal, post-McCarthy perspectives on the Red Scare. When he returned to comics in 1972, Cap '53 was an insanely paranoid racist who saw all minorities as Communists. By contrast, the real Cap "was scripted as a New Deal Democrat, opposed to racism and discrimination, but generally in favor of the Establishment" (42). Thus, Dittmer argues, the retcon of Cap '53 is also a retcon of America '53 to fit the prevailing sensibility.
<6> Three essays in the collection take a feminist approach to comics. Gerald F. Beritela reviews an interesting trend of Superman comics in the 1950's: having females appear with the same powers as Superman. The trend culminated in the 1959 introduction of Superman's cousin Supergirl, who would become a permanent part of the DC Universe. Before Supergirl, Beritela argues, "the presence of women with superpowers underscores the conflict between the heroic masculinity of Superman and the pressure for that masculinity to be replaced by a domesticated heterosexuality" (52-53). The conflict is resolved with the "muted domestication" of a familial relationship that is not a marriage (67). Robert M. McManus and Grace R. Waitman examine the female characters on the "Superboy" TV series Smallville. They find that the series "offers temporary possibilities of independence for the female characters," but it remains "predominantly patriarchal" because the female possibilities are limited by the dominant theme of preparing young Clark Kent to take on his future role as Superman (189). McManus and Waitman are also disturbed by the Smallville's "moral absolutism that discounts individual choice or cultural relativity" (179). Mark Edward DiPaolo takes on Wonder Woman in both comics and TV. He asserts, "Wonder Woman should ideally promote peace over war, feminism over conservatism, and multiculturalism over American Imperialism because she acts as one of the few progressive alternatives to the male-centric sensibilities still dominating popular culture" (152).
<7> A wide variety of other topics complete this anthology. Jeff McClelland looks at how the Thing of the Fantastic Four has developed over time from a Yancy Street everyman to a devout Jew. Dan O'Rourke and Pravin A. Rodrigues profile a recent Indian version of Spider-man. Brendan Riley describes how writer Warren Ellis has created a new post-revisionist brand of superheroes in comics like The Authority. Lorrie Palmer examines the 2004 film The Punisher as a "western noir," a combination of the motifs of the western and film noir. Overall, The Amazing, Transforming Superhero! is an excellent collection. Even as it covers a wide range of superhero-related topics, the diverse voices form a greater whole by giving a broad view of revisionism.
Christian
L. Pyle
Bluegrass
Community and Technical College
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