Post on 12-Mar-2023
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Introduction
Comic book readership is no longer limited to children.
Perhaps the most famous is Maus (1991), based on creator Art
Spiegelman interviewing his father, a Polish Jew who survived
the Holocaust, which was the first graphic novel to win the
Pulitzer Prize and brought attention not only to audiences
outside the usual comics fan base, but also to academics and
professional scholars. Alternative comics and graphic novels
have proven that the medium of comics offers many artistic
possibilities in its multiple forms of expression. Bending to
the wishes of artists and writers, comics can easily become
memoirs like Maus, autobiographies like Marjane Satrapi’s
Persepolis (2000), social commentaries like Gene Luen Yang’s
American Born Chinese (2006), and much more. These works are
all sophisticated in their narratives and visual styles, despite
prior prejudices that comics are immature, and have even found
places as standard texts in college and university courses (Heer
and Worcester xi).
Superhero comics, while gradually gaining academic
acceptance, still remains a site of struggle for legitimacy
as a field of study. For instance, when studying comic books,
it would be extremely difficult to avoid superheroes (Wolk 89),
for their existence is integral to the history of comics (Hatfield
et al. xi). However, comics experts such as Scott McCloud, Martin
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Baker, Claudia Goldstein, and Douglas Wolk, quoted above,
distinguish superhero comics from graphic novels and
alternative or art comics in their analyses (Romagnoli and
Pagnucci 21-2). Wolk even expresses apologetically the need
to study them along with the academically approved works. For
example, Wolk, even with his positive attitudes towards the
study of superheroes, explains that encountering superhero
comics is a necessity “if you are going to honestly look into
American comics,” arguing that scholars must acknowledge how
superhero comics’ status as the mainstream puts “artists and
readers who are interested in comics as a form of artistic
expression . . . horribly off balance” (Wolk 89). Scott McCloud,
too, when noting common misconceptions of comics, adds “guys
in tights” as one of the negative factors frequently used to
dismiss the form as insignificant popular entertainment
(McCloud 2).
This is due to the fact that to many, superhero comics still
appear simple and childish with their unbelievable superpowers,
silly costumes in bright colors, straightforward stories of
good versus evil in which the good (almost) always wins, and
most importantly, with many varieties of merchandise including
books and cartoons targeting children. Another reason may be
that superhero comics depend largely on a relatively specialized
fan culture and vast knowledge of the different “Universes”
and back stories. While “fan-based knowledge is . . . valued
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in academy, fannishness,” of superhero comics, where fans are
significant participants, so much so that some of them become
professional creators, “is still regarded as . . . a symptom
of a failure to professionalize” (Hatfield et al. xii). Thus,
many question the importance of studying superheroes.
Yet, first of all, there is no denying that superheroes
have, since their birth in the twentieth century, not only become
deeply rooted in American culture, but also “achieved iconic
recognition around the world” (Hatfield et al. xii). Thus any
effort to survey the history of popular culture and print media
in North America must include some consideration of superhero
comics. Furthermore, superheroes’ influences extend beyond
comic book culture. Their influence and popularity reach not
only into “other art forms” in a wide variety of media “such
as film, videogames, and prose fiction” (Hatfield et al. xii)
within the US, but also in foreign countries.
Secondly, and more importantly, traditional physically and
morally perfect superheroes and their stories, have become what
amounts to a modern, native mythology in American culture that
people idealize and idolize. As a form of national mythology,
superheroes “[transcend] generations and audiences” (Romagnoli
and Pagnucci 14), as well as “provide bold metaphors” for
understanding national identity (Wolk 92). For instance, an
ongoing series that began its run decades ago may be examined
by scholars to engage in topics such as both the past and
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contemporary culture and society. Comics, which continues to
expand in styles and genres, may be treated as modern literature
that explores mediums of storytelling, as it fuses graphics
into the reading process. Thus words are not the sole factor
in reading comics, as they are in novels; pictures too, as well
as how they are placed, must be “read.” This allows writers
and creators to expand not just their styles in writing, but
also their art, which includes line art, colors, and placement.
Possibilities, therefore, are endless.
Other times, one character may signify several different
meanings depending on when he or she was written. The easiest
example would be Superman. To some, he is a famous superhero,
a fictional character from comics and cartoons, and a fulfillment
of a child’s fantasy. To others, he is the All-American Boy
Scout, who symbolizes Truth, Justice, and the American Way.
Scholars interpret Superman variously as a Christ-like figure
(Goodwyn), a potent fantasy of the Jewish immigrant story (Tye),
and “a bold humanist response to Depression-era fears of runaway
scientific advances and soulless industrialism” (Morrison 6).
In this way, Superman, as figure from modern American mythology,
becomes an embodiment of some of the most crucial American
metaphors and “reflection[s] of what a culture values[,] . . .
tak[ing] on the burden of being a representation of what culture
and society value[s] at a given moment” (Romagnoli and
Pagnucci15). Some of the most successful scholarship on
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superheroes focuses on this cultural studies approach,
analyzing the significance of the superhero as an avatar of
a particular period’s anxieties and values. Critic Matthew J.
Costello for example, in Secret Identity Crisis (2009), analyzes
Marvel heroes during the Cold War era, comparing the characters
to America’s national identity then, and looks into how the
society is reflected in them.
This form of analysis, reading the superhero as a metaphor
of a particular society’s values, is supported not only in close
analysis of characters, but also in tracing new developments
in the larger narratives about existing or new characters. For
instance, at first Marvel, whose rise in superhero comics began
during right before World War II with the patriotic super-soldier
Captain America, published comics with only white heroes, and
these comics targeted mainly male audiences. However, during
the Civil Rights Movement, new Marvel comics such as The X-Men,
which featured characters of many races and nationalities,
became popular, and now, in 2014, with the recognition of both
the growing number of female readers and the importance of queer
representation, comics with female leads and LGBTQ characters
are increasing and attracting widespread media attention. Ms.
Marvel and Captain Marvel are both series that started this
year with new female protagonists, while gay couples such as
Hulkling and Wiccan from Young Avengers still remain popular
characters.
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What should be noted, however, is that studies of superheroes
do not solely rely on, nor do their focuses remain exclusively
on, cultural contexts. Scholarship on superheroes and methods
for examining these comics have developed and matured, just
as the comics themselves have. Briefly surveying the history
of superhero comics in parallel with the history of comics
studies, I hope to show that formalist analysis, in addition
to cultural studies of comics, can shed light on the fact that
society is no longer the only driving force of superhero comics.
Within their comics, superhero comics have created an individual
universe with a culture of its own, which is reflected in forms
and contexts in the comics.
Early superhero comics are roughly divided in to three
periods spanning much of the twentieth century. The Golden Age,
beginning in 1938, with Superman’s debut in Action Comics #1,
and ending during the late forties or early fifties, marks the
rise of superheroes. Many famous superheroes that are still
popular today were created during this period, including: Batman
and Wonder Woman by All-American Publications (now DC Comics)
and Captain America by Marvel Comics. The Golden Age was followed
by the Silver Age, which is considered to have begun in the
mid-fifties and extended to circa 1970. The Silver Age brought
the second wave of superheroes, including the new Flash and
Green Lantern, along with Spider-Man and the X-Men. These first
two Ages are significant in the superhero genre because it was
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primarily during these decades that superhero comics developed
the universes, sub-genres, traditions, tropes, characters, and
narrative styles that became mainstream within superhero comics
and are still seen in comics today.
During the following Bronze Age, which occurred from around
the early seventies to 1985, comics began to become more socially
relevant. Superhero comics during this Age, while trying to
maintain approval from the regulations set forth in the Comics
Code (first devised in 1954, then revised to loosen restrictions
in 1971), tackled realistic issues such as drugs, alcohol,
racism, and environmental pollution. Denny O’Neil and Neal
Adams’ Green Lantern/Green Arrow alone covered three of these
topics, and an Iron Man issue in 1979 entitled “Demon in the
Bottle” deals with Iron Man’s alcoholism. Bronze Age comics
also started to feature darker plotlines that were more common
before the advent of the Comics Code. For example, Batman loses
his campiness, which had reached its peak during the sixties,
in the hands again of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, marking the
beginning of the darker Age. Yet the most famous moment of the
Bronze Age was the death of Gwen Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man
#121-2 published in June-July 1973. The villain, the Green Goblin
tries to murder her, and in an attempt to save her, Spider-Man
accidentally snaps her neck. This accidental death of a
mainstream hero’s girlfriend by his own hand that still haunts
readers and Peter Parker today established the fact that darker
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times for heroes were not only imminent but also inevitable,
a development I will later examine in further detail.
Studies of superhero comics during these three Ages focus
primarily on cultural contexts, in looking at the ways that
they reflect and influence their contemporary societies. The
Bronze Age is not an exception, and societal influences can
also be seen in earlier comics. For example, Superman, as I
have already mentioned is a reaction towards Depression-era
America. Captain America, in comics published during the
forties, on the other hand, fought America’s wartime enemies,
the Nazis and the Japanese, and became a successful tool in
showing support for American troops. The heroes brought to life
during the Silver Age, especially in Marvel Comics, such as
Spider-Man and the Hulk reflect in some ways the counterculture
of the sixties, in that they are outsiders with angst-filled
problems, unlike their more idealized Golden Age predecessors.
Thus, superhero studies on early works created the basis for
acknowledging superhero comics’ significance within cultural
studies and legitimizing superhero scholarship more generally.
In addition to creating the superhero tradition and the
beginnings of superhero studies, there is another important
contribution made by the three early Ages, to both the genre
and the study of it within academia. The end of the Bronze Age
marks approximately fifty years since the debut of superheroes.
From Superman’s appearance to the introduction of Green Lantern
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and Green Arrow, superhero comics themselves created their own
history by developing such an extensive body of work. With one
publication after another, superhero comics have expanded their
archive, enriching themselves with back stories and details
that creators continue to refer back to and build upon. As a
result, superhero comics now consist of, for instance, the DC
and Marvel Universes, in which seriality connects past and
present works into one enormous, intertextual fictional world.
Narrative structures over the years build on that complexity,
so that many comics and characters are intricately
interconnected with one other. In this way, from the origins
onwards through the eighties and nineties, both superhero comics
and superhero scholarships begin to take another route in
addition to their still important function in relation to
cultural context, where comics comments on comics themselves.
Superhero comics would examine, for example, their own
tradition, history, and industry through their comics, instead
of solely focusing on contemporary society. Superhero
scholarship is thus affected by this new course the comics are
taking, in that it must study the texts not just through cultural
contexts, but also in relation to past superhero comics and
its seriality.
Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark
Knight Returns, both published in 1986, collectively ended the
Bronze Age, and introduced superhero comics into a darker, more
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modern age. Both series commented explicitly on their current
society, which was unstable due to the Cold War and the lingering
national trauma over the Vietnam War, but that was not the main
thing that caught the audiences’ attention and interest. It
was the fact that they self-consciously accumulated material
from the superhero archive into their works, picking out pieces
that they felt were outdated, and revising them into something
more fitting for mature readers, who had been young readers
throughout the Golden, Silver, and/or Bronze Ages. These revised
heroes also became darker as they embraced many traits not allowed
in traditional superhero comics intended for younger readers,
such as more realistic and graphic scenes of violence, death,
and sexuality. As a result, audiences who were longing for fresh
superhero narratives devoured them. Miller’s and Moore’s style
of dark heroes became a trend among readers and creators, and
for several years, they and the creators they influenced
dominated superhero comics.
About a decade into what is known as the Dark Age, some
creators began to question this trend that had been going on
for years. Realizing at one point that the darkness may be
limiting the types of stories writers and artists can write,
new works such as Marvels (1994) by Kurt Busiek, and Kingdom
Come (1996) by Mark Waid, both drawn by Alex Ross, appear. These
comics, which look back into the almost-forgotten Golden and
Silver Ages, make a point of praising the past when superheroes
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were brighter and encompassed happiness and hope. In this way,
these new nostalgic comics that pull superhero fans away from
the darkness that had engulfed the genre, and plunges them deep
into nostalgia, were a clear reaction against the dark
revisionist works. Cultural context is no longer the
preoccupation of these comics as a genre, but instead, their
interests lay in superhero comics themselves, and their past
and future.
By the turn of the millennium, more and more comics have
begun to examine not just society, but their own superhero comics
cultures. Many comics are now exploring the conventions and
limitations of the medium and the genre itself, becoming
meta-fictions, or rather, meta-comics. Superhero comics
scholarship is also affected by the decades-long progression
the genre made, for it is no longer enough to study comics solely
in relation to a particular moment in North American culture.
The complexities inherent in the continuity of superhero comics’
universes offer allows writers and creators to develop a new
narrative model: which I will term meta-comics. As literary
critics, we cannot dismiss this interesting turn of events.
Therefore, in this thesis, I investigate the ways in which
contemporary superhero comics such as those by creator Grant
Morrison react to and try to revise the superhero comics form.
In chapter one I will examine the two central revisionist comics
series of the Dark Age, examining how they changed superhero
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comics, which will continue to chapter two, where I will analyze
the most important subsequent nostalgic works that went against
revisionist comics to clarify the two opposing forces of trends
that have appeared in the superhero genre. Finally, in chapter
three and four, I will read closely Grant Morrison’s Seven
Soldiers of Victory (2006), along with other superhero comics,
but not primarily through its cultural context, as many fruitful
studies of other superhero comics have already done. I will
analyze Seven Soldiers of Victory to argue that despite the
opposite trends of innovation and tradition, superhero comics,
which are built on a history of continuity and seriality, must
have aspects both of the new and the old and increasingly must
demonstrate awareness of their own generic and formal
conventions and history.
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Chapter I
The Arrival of the Extreme Revisionists
Readers who were children during the Golden and Silver Ages
were adults by the 1980’s. Thus, the main two publishers of
superhero comics, DC and Marvel, needed to fit the needs of
their consumers by creating comics more enjoyable for older
audiences. This brought the genre into its maturity. By 1984,
re-inventions and re-vitalizations of long-standing narratives
were becoming more common (Bongco 136). Marvel’s Daredevil,
The X-Men series, and DC’s Camelot 3000 are some examples of
comics that aimed for older readers in the 1980s, to name a
few. However, two important series, both first published in
1986 by DC Comics, set the paths for future superhero comics:
Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s
Watchmen.
The Dark Knight Returns tells a tale of a futuristic
Gotham, where an aging Bruce Wayne is no longer Batman. However,
with the return of former villains, a confrontation with
Superman, and the emergence of new threats in an unstable society,
with the help of a new Robin, he dons the costume once more,
coming out of retirement, to protect his city as he used to.
Watchmen, on the other hand, uses no major superheroes, but
instead, alludes to already existing characters with traits
familiar to those who have actively read superhero narratives.
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This series starts as a whodunit mystery in which a former
superhero, The Comedian, gets murdered. Rorschach, who still
works as a hero even after the Watchmen, a superhero team he
and The Comedian used to belong to, disbanded, is convinced
that a murderer is out to get retired superheroes, and he sets
out to investigate. What is then revealed is not a simple murder
mystery, but a dreadful conspiracy that could end up destroying
millions of lives all over the world. These two works, though
different in plot, share several innovative characteristics
in their storytelling that rejects traditional superhero
narratives, and that as a result, constitute a formula for later
superheroes to follow. Their heroes are enveloped in darkness,
the antithesis of the optimistic image of hope readers were
accustomed to in superheroes. With these two works, darker
heroes, or antiheroes, began to rise in popularity, and the
bright ideals of the Golden and Silver Ages started to become
outdated.
Revisionists Works, Case One: Watchmen (1987)
In Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, several key
traditional traits of superhero comics that are fundamentally
change. Invulnerability is one of the most acknowledged traits
of superheroes. This invulnerability is not limited to the
heroes’ superpowers and their immortality, such as Superman’s
steel-like skin that stops bullets, or Wolverine’s healing
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factor that allows him to survive almost any damage inflicted
upon him. Rather, invulnerability also characterizes the
unchanging narrative structure of superhero comics. Danny
Fingeroth points out in his book Superman on the Couch that
because there is a “permanence[,] . . . a predictability” in
superhero comics, readers “achieve immortality through [them]”
(Fingeroth 37). In such predictability fans find a “stability
and comfort” (Hogue). As all heroes of adventure stories do,
the protagonist faces villains and their evil deeds in every
issue of superhero comic books. There is a crisis in which the
hero is almost defeated, but by some miraculous ploy, they make
it out alive, saving the city, country, or the world during
the process. This formula involving the heroes and their
obstacles “is the simplest and perhaps the oldest and widest
in appeal of all story types” (Cawelti 78) that can be traced
to the earliest civilizations, but is also found everywhere
in popular narratives today.
If, in the serial form of superhero comics, the crisis is
not averted in this single issue, it will be in the next, or
those after it. Readers, as a rule, know the hero will come
out a victor, and will not expect otherwise. Roger Rollin, in
his study on the hero figure in pop culture and the escapism
it provides, calls this “[ultimate] triumph” a “value
satisfaction,” where audiences revel in “the defeat of Evil . . .
by the Good” (Rollin 85). Because the readers’ culture and their
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comics share basic values, such as celebrating freedom, peace,
and goodness of heart, the heroes’ “repeated triumphs . . .
reinforce [the audience’s] confidence” (Rollin 87) in these
values. This creates a sense of security readers turn to again
and again, knowing they will not be betrayed by the outcomes
of the stories.
In Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns however, this
invulnerability is threatened in narratives where the good is
not necessarily triumphant. Death, for example, constantly
haunts the pages of the two works. Watchmen opens its series
with The Comedian’s death. He is one of the few members left
from the first hero team, the Minutemen, as well as the succeeding
team, the Watchmen, who still wears his costume and uses his
superhero alter ego, even though he now does government work
instead of individual vigilantism. Moreover, his death does
not occur in a battle for justice as befits a superhero; he
is taken by surprise in his own home, and
murdered by being thrown out the window,
making “quite a drop” (Moore I, 1) onto the
concrete sidewalk. Beaten and bloody, and
wearing only a bathrobe, he looks nothing
but an aging man, destroying every allusion
of him being a superhero (fig. 1-1). With
its first three pages, Moore’s Watchmen
thrusts upon the readers the fact that these Figure 1-1
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heroes, contrary to the genre’s longstanding convention of
invulnerability that allowed them to escape it for so long,
can now meet a banal, mortal death as a civilian.
Readers soon learn of the unfortunate fates of some of the
other former members of the Minutemen. For example, the
Silhouette was murdered, with hints that it is the result of
a hate crime motivated by her lesbianism. Another, the Dollar
Bill, got his cloak tangled during a bank raid, and thus he
was shot. Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis are dead as
well; the former murdered, the latter killed in a car accident.
None of these heroes died the honorable death of a superhero,
with the possible exception of the Dollar Bill: he died on the
job, but his death was caused by simple clumsiness. The ignoble
deaths of the former Minutemen implies that, up until then,
heroes had been lucky enough to avoid mortality, but also blind
to the fact that they could get killed like any other non-super
human. The Silhouette’s death also suggests that despite her
contribution as a superhero, she was still an individual
belonging to a minority facing widespread prejudice, and her
being “super” did nothing to mitigate the violent hate exercised
upon her. Thus, their deaths serve as a wakeup call to remind
superhero comics readers that they have been turning a blind
eye to their heroes’ mortality as humans.
Furthermore, the heroes of Watchmen lack the stable
temperament readers so often find comfort in. Mothman from the
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Minutemen, for example, has been “committed to a mental
institution after a bout of alcoholism and a complete mental
breakdown” (Moore II, 30), and this instability can also be
seen in former Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan becomes a superhero out
of obligation because of the godlike powers he gained, but is
detached from any sense of morality, as seen in flashbacks to
the Vietnam War, where he makes no move to save a pregnant woman
the Comedian shoots from rage, or when Janey, his former wife,
condemns him for not preventing John F. Kennedy’s assassination.
Rorschach, however, is the most disturbing: he is the only
hero left after the Keene Act of 1977 that prohibits “costumed
adventuring.” He continues his vigilantism just as he had done
before the passing of the Act. He has the spirit of a superhero
in that he believes in justice, but his severity is disconcerting.
His punishments are absolute, with death being an option, and
he is willing to torture those who hold back information from
him. The detached manner in which he conducts
tortures and the blackness that surrounds
him, along with his expressionless-ness due
to his mask, raises the questions on who
here is the villain, victim, or hero (fig.
1-2). Such blackness, however, envelopes
not only Rorschach, but all the pages
throughout Watchmen. While the series use
bold coloring common in superhero comics, Figure 1-2
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shadows painted black on somber colors darken the atmosphere
of the comics.
What makes Rorschach’s character even more unsettling is
the fact that he sees himself as sane, wondering why there “are
so few of [them] left active, healthy, and without personality
disorders” (Moore I, 19). Rorschach is more violent and obsessive
than the villains seen in most superhero comics, much less heroes,
but ironically he is the only one among the Watchmen who truly
hopes to eradicate evil from the world, and refuses to compromise
in his pursuit of it, as Silk Spectre, Nite Owl II, and Dr.
Manhattan do later in the series for the sake of world peace,
and is ultimately punished for this with death by Dr. Manhattan
(fig. 1-3). Thus, the boundaries between hero, villain, and
victim is
blurred once
more, as
Rorschach
the hero
becomes the
villain for
wanting to
punish all evil by sacrificing peace, but also the victim who
gets murdered by Dr. Manhattan who conducts the kill without
hesitation to maintain this peace. With Watchmen’s introduction
of heroes who are unstable, morally questionable, yet more
Figure 1-3
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realistic in their human nature, the image of superheroes was
changed forever, pushing not only readers but writers and artists
to turn away from the ignorant bliss of the Golden and Silver
Ages when heroes were the ultimate good, made into human form.
Revisionist Works, Case Two: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
(1986)
Just as Watchmen blazed a new trail in the representation
of superheroes and their invulnerability, Frank Miller’s
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns brought Batman’s image towards
the scowling, gothic vigilante readers are familiar with today,
and away from Adam West, the star of the campy Batman TV series
in the 1960s. Miller’s Bruce Wayne is a man in his fifties;
decades have passed since he was last active as the Batman.
This alone breaks the long tradition of superheroes never aging
over the years. In an essay on Superman, Umberto Eco argues
that “concept of time” is “[broken] down” in the traditional
superhero comics (Eco 17). He examines how, especially in early
comics, temporal ties between separate episodes or arcs are
omitted in order to avoid the series showing any awareness of
the inevitability of death:
In the sphere of a story, Superman accomplishes a given
job (he routs a band of gangsters); at this point the story
ends. In the same comic book, or in the edition of the
following week, a new story begins. If it took Superman
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up again at the point where he left off, he would have
taken a step toward death. On the other hand, to begin
a story without showing that another had preceded it would
manage, momentarily, to remove Superman from the law that
leads from life to death through time. (Eco 17)
This avoidance of temporality is not unique to Superman. Though
in existence for decades, Batman hardly ever ages from a man
in his mid-thirties. Consequently, Miller’s work hints at the
possibility of a mortal death by showing the passage of real
time through Batman’s own body (Bongco 153).
Similar to Watchmen, The Dark Knight opens with the specter
of death, here by exposing its readers to Bruce’s suicidal
thoughts. In the very first page of the series, Bruce, in a
dark helmet exposing only his mouth like the Batman's cowl (fig.
1-4),
is
driving
what
looks
like a
racing car, at a high enough speed to get it pinwheeled across
the finish line. Bruce, as he drives, feels “the front end
[lurch], all wrong”, followed by “the front tire decid[ing]
to turn all on its own” (Miller 10). Bruce shows no panic, but
Figure 1-4
22
instead pushes further, finally crashing the car. With fire
enveloping him, he thinks, “This would be a good death…” (Miller
10). Fortunately he makes it out alive, ”bail[ing] out at the
last second”, but this is only because he realizes that a death
such as this would be good for Bruce Wayne, but “not good enough”
for the Batman (Miller 10).
Bruce finds his will to live solely
after donning the superhero mantle again.
Until then, nightmares that reflect his
subconscious’ desire to become the Batman
again plague him. Yet, the moment a bat
comes crashing through a window Bruce
stands in front of (fig. 1-5), alluding
to a similar scene in Detective Comics
#33, which first illustrated the birth of the Batman (fig. 1-6),
Bruce sets
his
repressed
desires to
become the
Batman
free to
roam. The bat in The Dark Knight is nothing like the one in
Detective Comics #33. It is more realistic, vicious, and
fearless, shattering the glass of the window into pieces, which
Figure 1-5
Figure 1-6
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suggests that the new Batman, will take on these traits as well.
Bruce, the Batman, is mentally “born again” (Miller 34), but
he feels it physically too. In his fifties, as he makes impossible
leaps throughout the city, he “should be in agony[,] . . . a
mass of aching muscle—broken, spent, unable to move”, but
instead, he feels as if he is “a man of thirty—of twenty again”
(Miller 34). Bruce will be nothing more than an empty shell
as long as he denies his other self, the Batman. He is unable
to have a satisfying life without the thrill of hunting criminals.
Bruce’s motive to become the Batman is, along with
satisfaction in life, also related to his sexuality. Superhero
costumes have been seen as sexual by many critics and fans over
the years, because the costumes are drawn extremely skin tight,
usually with underwear worn on the outside, making the
superheroes seem almost naked. The superheroes would, then,
in these suggestive outfits, grapple and wrestle with others
like them. Wonder Woman, in her early comics for example, with
her Lasso of Truth, fights primarily female villains, and enjoys
a following of mostly supporters, such as her fellow Amazonians
or the sorority at fictional Holiday College; as a result, from
the beginning, she has been read in connection to sexual bondage
and lesbianism. Such readings of sexual nature of superhero
comics drove psychiatrist Frederic Wertham to write his infamous
1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent, which argues that superhero
comics are harmful to children because of their violence, as
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well as their sexual connotations.
Superheroism also functions as a fetish, for superheroes,
with their perfect muscular male and curvaceous female bodies,
embody masculine ideals, which is an idea further deconstructed
by Moore, in Watchmen, through the character of Nite-Owl.
Civilian Daniel Dreiberg is a pudgy, middle-aged man. However,
by donning a superhero costume, he is able to be a part of the
masculine ideal. The costume, as a “source of sexual power”
gives him release from his dull, ordinary status, as well as
confidence in himself (Reynolds 32). Thus, as Daniel, he has
sexual performance issues during his relationship with his lover
Laurie, but once they become their superhero alter egos, Nite
Owl and Silk Spectre, he is able to overcome this.
Costume as fetish is also explored in The Dark Knight Returns
(Bongco 156). Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s butler, nags Bruce about
“the prospects,” or the lack thereof, “a next generation” (Miller
21) in the Wayne family, which underscores Bruce’s failure to
find a romantic or sexual partner, and implies that he is not
interested. Yet, donning the Batman costume gives Bruce
excitement, making him feel alive and young once more, as if
to compensate for his lack sexual fulfillment. If this excitement
is the reason for the Batman to fight, it directly opposes the
traditional notion that superheroes fight entirely for selfless
reasons to protect the innocent, or that Bruce became the Batman
not only to avenge his parents’ deaths at the hands of criminals,
25
but also to prevent others from going through such traumatic
events. Batman here is no longer the friend to the law, a status
he had kept for decades since the introduction of the first
Robin, but instead motivated by his own ambivalent drives. Miller
brought back the violent vigilante of the shadows, and this
time, he was here to stay.
26
Chapter II
Bringing Traditions Back
Alan Moore’s and Frank Miller’s daring departures from
superhero tradition were such a success that many writers and
artists followed in their footsteps, creating one dark hero
after another. The early nineties brought new publishers
intentionally targeting older readers such as Image Comics,
which allowed superhero comics to portray more violence than
DC and Marvel. However, the two mainstream publishers also joined
the trend as their stories took more gruesome twists and turns,
especially with the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin (Batman
#428 Dec. 1988) and the shooting of Batgirl, Barbara Gordon,
by the Joker, resulting in her permanent paralysis (Batman:
The Killing Joke 1988) .
Despite the popularity of dark superheroes, some in the
comics community were skeptical of this shift in tone within
the genre. These writers and artists, as a response to the
descendants of Moore and Miller, created works that looked back
to the superhero tradition that had been neglected over the
previous few years. Such works led to more recognition of the
nostalgia market, where comics reminiscent of pre-Moore
–and-Miller times brought the readers back to the origins of
the genre that first built the world of superheroes, as well
as reminding them of the “good ol’ days” when the superheroes
27
symbolized simpler values. In a time when traditional
superheroes seemed almost lost, these writers have worked to
reclaim and return the heroes to the preceding brighter times
(Klock 78).
The Nostalgic Works, Case One: Marvels (1994)
Marvels, written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Alex Ross,
is one of the first works in mainstream superhero comics to
respond skeptically to the changes that Watchmen and The Dark
Knight Returns introduced into the genre. Published in 1994
as a four-issue limited short series, Marvels returns to the
origins of one of the first Marvel superheroes, gradually going
through the history of the Marvel Universe and how it came to
be. Starting with the birth of the Human Torch, followed by
the introduction of the Sub-Mariner, the Fantastic Four, Captain
America, the X-Men, and the Avengers, Marvels take a “nostalgic
tour” (Darius) of the Marvel heroes of the Golden and Silver
Ages, finally concluding with the controversial death of Gwen
Stacey, an event that marks the beginning of the Bronze Age
and the darker phase that follows.
Yet even though this is in many respects a nostalgia comic,
the protagonist is no hero; Phil Sheldon is a photographer for
the Daily Bugle, and specializes in taking pictures of the
superheroes that, one after another, have started appearing
in New York City. Truly amazed at these superhumans, Sheldon
28
names them the “Marvels,” and takes pictures to show the world
how they live up to their names. This positive beginning,
unfortunately, does not last. As the number of superheroes
increases and their battles become bigger, civilians start
blaming the “Marvels” for the appearance of villains and the
destruction of their city, even if the heroes do manage to save
the day. “The Marvels were supposed to be pure,” Sheldon cries
(Busiek and Ross, Marvels #3). This cry grieves over the Marvels,
who gained popularity as saviors of the city, but are now treated
by civilians as untrustworthy creatures residing in New York.
Superhero comics as a historical genre in reality takes
similar steps as with the New Yorkers in Marvels. During its
glorious Golden and Silver Ages that Marvels celebrate, when
comics built the superhero tradition, as in the first few years
after the appearance of the Marvels in New York City, the heroes
were at their peak, respected and praised for their heroics.
Everyone wanted a glimpse of these colorful characters in the
battle between good and evil. Likewise, superhero comics of
the Golden and Silver Ages were simplistic and idealistic, but
full of hope and widely read among young Americans. However,
just as more New York City citizens started to treat the Marvels
as threatening, Moore’s and Miller’s revision of superheroes
in the 1980s exposed their darker sides. Heroes now became
characters that readers must be wary of, rather than blindly
support and admire. Thus, Geoff Klock interprets Marvels as
29
a “plea not to treat heroes as monsters” (Klock 79), as more
and more creators and fans are wont to do. Busiek and Ross try
remind their readers of what the genre was about in the first
place by recalling the early years with nostalgia.
Over time, Sheldon witnesses more and more heroes treated
as untrustworthy criminals due to people’s fright and prejudice
towards the Other; as a result, his idealistic perspective on
them gradually tarnishes. Then, he meets Gwen Stacey. The “wonder
and delight in her face” when
she looks up into the skies
to see the “Marvels” makes
him realize all over again
that the superheroes are
“here to save the innocent[,]
to save people like Gwen”
(Busiek and Ross, Marvels
#4). He experiences a renewal
of his former childlike awe
at the Marvels through
witnessing hers (fig. 2-1).
Sheldon is, however, a
little too late in coming to this realization, for Moore’s and
Miller’s darkness was already foreshadowed in Ross’s art.
Walking through the city, Sheldon and Gwen notice the city is
in a panic, due to “the Sub-Mariner . . . invad[ing] the city—to
Figure 2-1
30
reclaim an Atlantean citizen taken prisoner” (Busiek and Ross,
Marvels #4). In the sky, among Sub-Mariner’s army, is a flying
ship (fig. 2-2) that suspiciously resembles Nite-Owl’s Owlship,
within which ride the members of Moore’s Watchmen. (fig. 2-3)
The scene thus
foreshadows of
invasions and
arrivals of dark
heroes, who would
replace those of
the idealistic
Golden and Silver
Ages. A few days
after Sheldon and Gwen meet,
Gwen is kidnapped by the Green
Goblin, resulting in her death
and marking, in the
allegorical rendering of the
history of comics in Marvels,
the beginning the Bronze Age,
the gritty foreshadowing of
Moore and Miller’s later turn toward darkness. Sheldon, who
had only just rediscovered his admiration for the “Marvels”
Figure 2-2
Figure 2-3
31
through Gwen, is devastated, and can no longer bring himself
to take photographs or finish the documentary he was working
on.
Busiek and Ross argue through their series that such
disillusion is where superhero comics are headed. It is no
surprise then that Sheldon decides it is “time to retire” (Busiek
and Ross, Marvels #4). The destructive forces of darkness that
swept through superhero comics in the 1980s not only corrupted
superheroes, but also pushed away some of the fans who had been
supporting the superheroes for a long period of time. Marvels
implies that, just as Sheldon abandoned his Marvels, many
formerly loyal fans have lost their love of superhero comics
because they are disillusioned by the dark revisionist works.
Nostalgic Works, Case Two: Kingdom Come (1996)
Whereas Busiek and Ross’s Marvels went back into the past
to relive the births of traditional Marvel heroes, DC Comics’
Kingdom Come, written by Mark Waid and also drawn by Alex Ross,
takes its readers into the bleak future, where the Justice League
and Society have broken up, with each member now taking on
separate responsibilities, while Superman is fully retired.
The aging Golden and Silver Age heroes are more likely to be
past figures celebrated in places such as Planet Krypton, a
Planet Hollywood-like theme restaurant dedicated to Golden Age
superheroes. The streets are now run by a young, new generation
32
of heroes who are violent, brutal, and unforgiving. Looking
at these new heroes fight, it is difficult to determine who
is fighting for the good, for none seem to care for the running
civilians (fig. 2-4).
These heroes are not traditional selfless heroes in any sense;
they fight not for justice, but instead they “simply fight to
fight,” with one other as foes for their own pleasure, a trait
previously seen in the heroes of both Watchmen and The Dark
Knight Returns (Waid and Ross 22).
In these young pseudo-heroes, Waid and Ross echo the
brutality portrayed in Moore and Miller’s works; rather than
looking to the past, Kingdom Come portrays a sad future for
Figure 2-4
33
superheroes. All that remains are those who
fight for entertainment and pleasure.
The future Batman in Kingdom Come seems
to have inherited the ruthlessness of
Miller’s series as well. Batman no longer
patrols the city himself. Instead, he has
robots twice the size of people, roaming
and flying through Gotham, terrorizing
crooks into obedience. Wherever there is
a sign of criminal activity, a number of
these robots appear from the shadows of
buildings, their lights shining accusingly
against the wrongdoers, and circling them
from all directions so that they have
nowhere to run (fig. 2-5) By adopting the
unforgiving nature of recent young “heroes”
and maintaining his ambivalence as
developed in Miller’s series, Batman is able
to keep “his city under control” (Waid and
Ross 48).
In the beginning of the Kingdom Come series, Wonder Woman
visits a retired Superman to inform him of a recent nuclear
disaster. Responsible for this catastrophe is not a villain,
but Magog, “one of the new breed of heroes” (Waid and Ross 37),
whom Wonder Woman describes as “out of control” (Waid and Ross
Figure 2-5
34
34). According to hints in the text, Magog’s violent recklessness
drove Superman to leave Metropolis and into a secluded retirement
in the Fortress of Solitude. Magog, with his team, the Justice
Battalion, had “descended upon the weathered Parasite,” the
presumed villain (Waid and Ross 37). Magog and his team’s attacks
are ruthless, but “onlookers” are “not surprised . . . by the
savagery” (Waid and Ross 37). Parasite, who repeatedly shrieks,
“leave me alone,” panics because of the brutal beating, and
desperately lashes out, hitting a “nuclear-powered Captain
Atom” (Waid and Ross 37). Unexpectedly, Parasite’s attack “split
Captain Atom open,” causing a nuclear explosion, killing “close
to a million,” with “the dying Atom’s radioactive energy
[sweeping] hundreds of kilometers,” thus contaminating the
Midwest, including “the entire state of Kansas” (Waid and Ross
38).
These new generation heroes, including Kingdom Come’s
Batman and Magog, are descendants of the Dark Age of heroes
of Moore and Miller. They have inherited the unforgiving nature
and brutality to the point that readers cannot tell which
characters are on the good side any more. Their irresponsible
actions, attitudes far from heroic, and pleasure in causing
pain in their opponent ultimately causes the tragedy of
Parasite’s inadvertent nuclear detonation. Through this
accident, Waid and Ross imply that the dark superheroes no longer
function as heroes. The eradication of Superman’s earthly
35
childhood home of Smallville, Kansas, is, in Darius’s analysis,
“a metaphor for the excesses of revisionism,” that “demolished
the innocent idealism associated with Superman’s true-blue
childhood” (Darius). Superman’s hometown on Earth is where he
grew up to be the hero he is; it represents his origin as a
superhero as well as Midwestern small-town values. His adoptive
parents taught him that he must use his powers for the greater
good, and their love helped in creating his identity as a
superhero. Furthermore, because Superman was the first
character of the superhero genre, Kansas is the representative
birthplace of all heroes, from whence traditions and tropes
were built and developed.
The revisionism that arrived with the 1980s was not as sudden
as a nuclear explosion, emerging gradually through the
development of more naturalistic superhero comics during the
Bronze Age. Yet the reactions to the dark turn of Miller and
Moore were definitive. Readers’ and creators’ responses were
extreme in that they suddenly decided to turn their backs on
brightly colored hero comics, and replacing their pages with
dark, angst-filled ones. Magog is the outcome of this superhero
revisionism. Not only does his violent nature cause Superman
himself to lose hope in superheroism, it completely destroys
the state of Kansas in a nuclear holocaust. In this allegorical
figuring of the history of comics, the superhero genre thus
becomes utterly contaminated by extreme revisionism. They wipe
36
out traditional values completely, and the influences of
revisionism infect the genre at an extraordinary speed, leaving
morally ambiguous vigilantes on many pages of superhero comics.
Suffering awaits whoever wishes to return to the comics, or
to Kansas in Kingdom Come, for superheroes no longer represent
hopefulness, but rather moral devastation.
With the world
fallen into chaos,
Superman comes out of
retirement in order to
go against the
madness, but when he
does, he has no choice
but to take up the
darkness himself. This
immediately becomes
clear in the art as well
as the narrative of
Kingdom Come. In the
first panel of his
return, Superman looms
above normal citizens,
holding one rogue hero
in each hand, as if to
Figure 2-6
37
show he is more powerful than anyone there, and that he will
attempt to subdue everyone by force (fig. 2-6). The scowl on
his face will remain there for the rest of the series, for the
boy from Kansas is gone. Even the iconic crest on his chest
has changed its color from yellow and red to black and red.
The narrator of the series, Norman McKay, an ordinary citizen
much like Phil Sheldon of Marvels, stares up at the upgraded
Superman in horror, thinking that this is the beginning of “the
threat of Armageddon” (Waid and Ross 55). With an ominous shadow
constantly cast upon his features (fig.
2-7), Superman answers questioning
reporters that he “returned to teach them
the meaning of truth and justice” and that
they “will make things right again” (Waid
and Ross 68), but this turns out to be the
start of Superman’s tyrannical reign over
humans with superpowers.
Superman fights the “madmen” (Waid and
Ross 62) pretending to be heroes,and in
order to suppress them, “the deadliest and
most uncontrollable” (Waid and Ross 113)
are imprisoned in Gulag, a specially built
prison for that purpose in the wastelands of Kansas. Such tyranny
does not last of course, ending in tragedy that involves again
Figure 2-7
38
a nuclear explosion and the deaths of hundreds. Superman’s
realistic revisionism demonstrates that superheroes embracing
darkness will only lead to the destruction of the genre, as
seen in the finale of the battle between heroes, where only
Superman survives among skeletons. As The Spectre, who has been
guiding Norman throughout the series, claims “judgment has been
passed” (Waid and Ross 189), that there is no future in extreme
revisionism, and superheroes, as a genre, must earn fans’ trust
again.
While initially 1980s fans reacted enthusiastically to the
newly introduced darkness of comics heroes, as some point out,
“many in the 1990s believed that this darkness had resulted
in a creative dead end” (Darius), in which its restrictions
limit the possible variations of heroes and stories. Hence
creators such as Busiek, Waid, and Ross, through their nostalgic
series, point out the pitfalls of ignorantly praising innovative
trends while disregarding the past. Interestingly, their return
to tradition brought recognition to a new market, in which
consumers began eagerly seeking out nostalgic works. On one
hand, there were those who still desired the trendy dark heroes
edging towards antiheroes, whereas on the other, many people
wished to read works where heroes were presented in a more
traditional manner. It seems superhero trends in the 1990s were
heading in two different directions.
39
As I discussed in the previous chapter, Watchmen and The
Dark Knight Returns are still praised as revisionist works that
depart successfully from outdated traditional superhero comics
now considered immature and silly. Also, as two of the first
superhero works designated “graphic novels,” they continue to
be picked up by the media, such as Time, with their “List of
the 100 Best Novels,” compiled in 2005, and by audiences who
are not usually familiar with superhero comics. Such works are
still widely seen as the new type of superhero comics valued
and accepted in modern times. However, within the first decade
after these revisionist comics works appeared, some creators
and fans already began to mourn the loss of tradition, and the
fact that most of the superheroes had gone in the same direction,
towards the darkness Moore and Miller introduced to the genre.
As a result of this perceived conformity, creators who were
unconvinced by the extreme revisionism that took place in the
industry as a result of the influence of Moore and Miller
published new works that returned to the roots of the hero
character and the genre as a whole.
At a glance, then, it would seem superhero comics’ attitudes
towards tradition are binary: either they are revisionist or
traditional. However, closer readings show that such an
understanding is simplistic.
For example, Miller did indeed make major progress in
superhero comics with The Dark Knight Returns. He introduced
40
a new style in comics art with sketchier lines, colored by
colorist Lynn Varley in watercolors, rather than the usual clear
line style and bold, simple colors (fig. 2-8), and proved that
superhero comics with existing
characters can be
sophisticated, but more
importantly to many, he wrote
Batman as the dark vigilante,
a characteristic that would
continue for the next two
decades. What is easily
forgotten, however, with the
prevalence of the eye-catching
campy image of Batman that had
been standard since the 1960s,
is that in his first appearance
in 1939, had begun as a ruthless
vigilante with an unforgiving attitude towards villains .
Michael Fleisher, in his Original Encyclopedia of Comic Book
Heroes, notes of the early versions of the character that “easily
a score of criminals die by his hand” due to his “grim brutality”
(Fleisher 83). Thus, Miller’s Batman is in some sense returning
to his roots. Whether this was done deliberately in The Dark
Knight Returns or not, the past, present, and future of Batman
become interconnected and inseparable.
Figure 2-8
41
Both Marvels and Kingdom Come, while they focus on nostalgic
superhero narratives, also display the kind of complexity that
was a prominent feature of the graphic novel, which employs
subtle techniques such as symbolism as it targets mature readers
rather than children. Furthermore, both works end with hope
for the future represented by the next generation of heroes.
For example, in the ending of Kingdom Come, the Golden Age heroes
seem to be back in retirement once again. Clark and Diana meet
up with Bruce in the theme restaurant, Planet Krypton, as if
in remembrance of the old days, with surprising news. They
announce (although Bruce, being the World’s Greatest Detective,
figures it out through “observation” before they do), that Diana
is pregnant with Clark’s child. The announcement is then followed
by Diana addressing Bruce with her hope that he will become
the child’s godfather. This unborn child would thus be “the
child of Superman and Wonder Woman[,] and Batman” (Waid and
Ross 212); literally, the second generation. Clark hopes that
the child will be a “battler for truth[,] justice[,] and a new
American way,” and dreams about a hopeful future (Waid and Ross
212).
In Marvels, we find a similar gesture of hope on the last
page, as Phil Sheldon, after declaring his retirement from
photographing the Marvels, decides to take one final picture
to mark the day as both an end and a new beginning. He calls
over a newspaper boy who was passing by, and asks him, “a nice,
42
normal ordinary boy” (Busiek and Ross Marvels #4) to join the
picture with him and his wife. Sheldon does not realize that
this boy who introduces himself as Danny Ketch will in the future
become superhero Ghost Rider. Possessing the power of the Spirit
of Vengeance, Ghost Rider, an antihero, is a flaming skeleton
in a leather jacket, riding a blazing motorcycle. As a series,
Ghost Rider is in every sense a post-Watchmen/The Dark Knight
Returns (anti)hero comic: it is poorly written, and the visuals
are utterly engulfed in angst, darkness, and violence. In this
sense, the final moments of Marvels indicate the coming darkness
and disillusions. However, as Sheldon places an accepting hand
on Danny’s shoulder, the clouds open up to a bright sun and
blue skies, and Sheldon, his wife, and Danny smile into the
camera and towards, a promising future, similar to the Big 3
in Kingdom Come (figure 2.9).
In this way, though Kingdom Come and Marvels are nostalgic
in reminding readers of the Golden and Silver Ages, they do
not completely dismiss the recent innovations in superhero
comics. Rather, they show optimism, not only in the characters
and stories, but also in the genre itself, by incorporating
(at times critically) the new directions Moore and Miller were
able to bring into superhero comics, which not only include
realism and darkness but also more sophisticated narratives,
into future works to broaden the possibilities of what superhero
43
Figure 2-9
comics may achieve. The hint of a bright future in the final
panels of both series expresses their hope for the unknown future
and the coming generations of superheroes.
At the same time, Kingdom Come and Marvels brought
44
recognition to a new approach to superhero comics, in which
comics reflect on superhero comics and their industries. Whereas
comics previously published such as Watchmen and The Dark Knight
Returns criticized harshly real world events of contemporary
society such as the government’s attitudes toward the Cold and
Vietnam Wars, these comics, such as Kingdom Come and Marvels
examine more closely what is happening to their fictional
universes, collectively arguing against superhero comics
heavily influenced by darkness. Such self-reflexivity continues
into the present.
Nostalgic comics creators are not the only ones who must
be aware of both the past and future of the genre. For instance,
even creators who hope to escape the binds of tradition must
also acknowledge what traditional works of the past have given
them, as T.S. Eliot claims in “Tradition and the Individual
Talent.” In this essay, Eliot challenges how poets are praised
by their peers and audiences for how original and different
their works are in comparison to their predecessors. He claims
that a writer, in creating literature, must not write “merely
with his own generation in his bones[,] but with a feeling [of]
the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within
it the whole of the literature of his own country” (Eliot
“Tradition”). In other words, Eliot argues that a writer should
not focus solely on contemporary trends or on creating such
innovations, but rather, also understand tradition, and fuse
45
the spirit of the great works of the past with the newness of
the present. It is easy to dismiss the characteristics of the
past that are incorporated into innovative works, as seen in
the voluble appreciations for Moore and Miller’s
ground-breaking graphic novels of the eighties.
46
Chapter III
Not Too Old, Not Too New: Part One,
The New Superheroes in Seven Soldiers of Victory (2006)
The complex interplay between tradition and innovations
allows us to realize that successful innovative works of
contemporary times have always also had traditional aspects
blended into their narratives, and superheroes comics are no
exception. In this perspective, I would like to look closely
into Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory, published by
DC Comics. Seven Soldiers is an unusual series presented in
a style, especially in its narrative structure, that is found
in no other comic. In Seven Soldiers, modern life on earth is
threatened by a culture-devouring species called the Sheeda,
and as the title of the series suggests, seven heroes, Zatanna,
the Shining Knight, Bulleteer, Klarion the Witch Boy,
Frankenstein, Mister Miracle, and the Manhattan Guardian, are
called forth according to a prophecy to defeat these creatures.
While this description resembles an ordinary superhero team
comics series, saving the world through collective effort, what
is unique about Seven Soldiers is that none of the seven heroes
actually meet their teammates. The series consists of a prologue,
epilogue, and seven miniseries for each soldier, all of which
are loosely interrelated, therefore creating one grand
narrative when read as a whole.
47
Seven Soldiers is like no series that came before, in that
it disrupts traditional narrative form, and created a new model
for superhero comics; Morrison himself stated in an interview
that his intention is to “re-build the ‘superhero’ concept from
the ground up.” (Morrison qtd. in Popimage). He believes that
in order for superhero universes to “remain viable and stay
alive,” change is inevitable, and that the genre must keep
evolving (Morrison, Supergods 118). This message about what
Morrison explicitly says he hopes to achieve through the series
is already embedded in the first few pages of the prologue,
or Part Zero, in a short segment entitled Weird Adventures.
On the first page of the issue, Thomas Ludlow Dalt, or The Spider,
heads for a cottage in Slaughter Swamp, hired to “kill a very
special target” (1.12). Slaughter Swamp is, according to the
man rowing the boat that conveys Thomas toward the cottage,
“where solid things turn soft and change” (1.10). Readers
familiar with the DC Universe will also recognize Slaughter
Swamp as the place where Cyrus Gold was killed, then brought
back as an undead monster named Solomon Grundy. Slaughter Swamp
then, is where the dead return and the solid turn soft again,
so that it may be molded into something different. It is thus
the perfect place to reshape the superhero genre itself, which
has up until now limited its narrative possibilities due to
its dependence on traditions and tropes built over time.
The story in this prologue echoes the motif of transformation
48
from old to new. The Seven Unknown Men await Thomas in the cottage.
As he enters, seemingly confused at the strange rooms, the Unknown
Men condemn him for being “another schmuck with bows and arrows”
(1.12), meaning he is another superhero with overused
characteristics and no uniqueness; they promptly relieve him
of his costume and weapons, wiping him clean. The Unknown Men
claim that it was they who hired Thomas for the assassination
job, but there is a twist in it: “the person [he]’ll be helping . . .
kill, is [him]self” (1.12). Repeating once more that Slaughter
Swamp is a place “where solid things turn soft and change,”
the Unknown Men urge the now naked Thomas into a shower stall
that appears out of nowhere. Under the spray of water, his colors
are drained away, with his dark hair turning light gray and
healthy skin
turning pale, as if
to wash away his
past and
personality, in
the act of “killing
himself” (fig.
3-1). Now stripped
and clean, the
Unknown Men
promise Thomas that Figure 3-1
49
they will “get [him] cool new clothes” (1.13).
The Seven Unknown Men, residing in Slaughter Swamp, belong
to the place of “in-between,” existing between the fictional
DC Universe and the reality we live in. This strange location
allows them to become manipulators of time and characters, so
that they can guide the superheroes to save the Earth from
destruction at the hands of the Sheeda. In addition to the Men’s
baldness, a noted physical trait of Morrison himself, readers
will later note in the final issue, Seven Soldiers of Victory:
Part One, that one of the Men wears a DC Comics logo on his
neck-tie. Given these physical details, it may be that, as many
have speculated, the Unknown Men represent avatars of Grant
Morrison himself(Wolk 281, Singer 232), or perhaps, comics
creators more generally. Ergo, the Time Tailors’ renewal of
the character, I, Spider, from a clichéd, “tenth rate” (1.12)
superhero into a “cool” one fit for their mission to save the
Earth serves as an allegory of comic book creators reexamining
the superhero genre, getting rid of outdated traditional
characters and themes, and updating them for contemporary
readers.
Rejection One: Superhero Stereotypes
Morrison’s Soldiers, his superheroes in the series, are
also inventive in that they are carefully fabricated so that
none of them follow the stereotypes still dogging many
50
contemporary creators and readers. One such famous stereotype
that still exists to the consternation of many fans, critics,
creators, and readers, is the white-Caucasian-male hero
formula. Though superhero comics have recently been
diversifying their characters and attaining a great deal of
media attention for it, the fact remains that the most famous
heroes are predominantly white males. While today’s superhero
comics readers are probably able to name a few famous superheroes
who are people of color and/or female, most non-fans today mainly
see heroes through film adaptations featuring characters, such
as Superman, Batman, Captain America, and Iron Man, all portrayed
as and by Caucasian males. Furthermore, not only does Marvel’s
upcoming Ant-Man movie star another white protagonist, Marvel
Studios recently announced that a British Caucasian actor,
Benedict Cumberbatch, will portray Doctor Strange in another
upcoming film, a move that brought on controversy among fans
about the possible white-washing of a racially ambiguous
character (see Baker-Whitelaw; Rodriguez).
In some adaptations, producers have cast non-white actors
to play characters that were originally white: for example,
Idris Elba plays Heimdell, a Norse God in Thor (2011), and in
2003, Marvel introduced an African American Captain America
in a new comics series. Unfortunately, the former provoked a
white supremacist group to boycott the film (Child). Such
volatile fan reactions, both progressive and reactionary,
51
demonstrate the difficulties in addressing the problematic
reality that the white male remains the dominant hero in a genre
where mutants and aliens with green skin or multiple eyes
scattered across their faces roam freely.
This is mainly due to several factors. One is that many
superheroes were created decades ago, when people of color were
rarely seen in mainstream entertainment. As Andrew Wheeler
points out in his article on superhero diversity, the first
“heroes were . . . created as white Americans because white
American audiences expected their heroes to look like them”
(Wheeler). This is not true in today’s racially diverse US
society, but as mentioned above, there are still conservative
fans that dislike how publishers are trying to bring in more
people of color, for these fans “want exactly what they fell
in love with over and over again” (Rucka qtd. in Rogers). Because
whiteness remains the status quo, conservative fans find white
superheroes “logical and comfortable” (Wheeler), and this
basically conservative value is reinforced by the superheroes’
job to maintain a stable society, rather than re-invent a new
one (Reynolds).
Powerful female characters such as Wonder Woman and the
Black Widow still remain supporting characters in the films,
and neither has her own adaptation, because of the belief that
superheroes’ target audiences are predominantly heterosexual
male. Feminist journalist and founder of Ms. magazine, Gloria
52
Steinem already argued back in 1972, that “the comic book
performers of . . . superhuman feats . . . are almost always
heroes” rather than heroines, and female characters were reduced
to “being so incompetent and passive” (Steinem 203). Even as
female superheroes gradually started to make appearances,
characters such as the Invisible Girl, later the Invisible Woman,
from Marvel’s Fantastic Four show clearly that superhero comics
were created for male audiences. While the Invisible Woman does
later become one of the most powerful superheroes, her initial
powers were to become invisible, as her name suggests, while
her other team members had more active powers such as turning
into flame (the Human Torch), stretching his body into various
shapes (Mister Fantastic), and super-strength that comes from
his rock-solid body (The Thing). Lillian Robinson, in her essay
defending the Invisible Girl cannot but admit that the Invisible
Girl possessed “stereotyped feminine roles” (Robinson 214),
where her primary concern is fashion rather than superheroism.
Now, as the Invisible Woman, she is no longer a shy, passive
female superhero, but the film adaptation of The Fantastic Four
from 2005 shows her in her underwear in several scenes, which
supports the new sexualized stereotype of female characters.
In Supergirls, which focuses on the history of female
superheroes, Mike Madrid points out how “women in comics had
always provided the eye candy for male readers,” (Madrid 279)
or how “female superheroes must look attractive . . . and in
53
the world of male fantasy, attractive = sexy” (Madrid 290).
Therefore, traditionally, female characters in superhero comics
were unable to attain the (super)power the males were given.
As of 2014, more and more series with female protagonists have
made appearances, but protagonists of film adaptations still
remain male.
However, despite the strong traditions of gendered and
racial stereotypes running through the superhero industry,
there are no Caucasian male leads in Seven Soldiers. The prologue
does start with Thomas Dalt, but the main role as the protagonist
of the issue is soon taken over by Shelly Gaynor, the female
hero known as the Whip. Of the Seven, both the Guardian and
Mister Miracle are African Americans, while Bulleteer and
Zatanna are female. Frankenstein, based on the creature from
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, has no specific race, considering
he was created by parts from several bodies stitched together.
The closest these characters get to the Caucasian male superhero
default is in the two characters of Klarion and the Shining
Knight, or Sir Justin, although neither exactly fits the
description. Klarion, with his pale blue skin and ghastly
appearance (fig. 3-2), comes from the underground Limbo Town,
which used to be a Puritan town in Roanoke, and has cut itself
off from the outside world. As the years have gone by, the
townspeople have come to call themselves witch-men and
witch-women, with necromancy as part of their everyday lives.
54
Furthermore, later in the
series, it is revealed that
Melmoth, the husband of
Gloriana Tenebrae, the Sheeda
Queen, had interbred with the
people of Roanoke, making him
the distant ancestor of these
mysterious people. Though
Klarion originates from a town
that still practices some of
the customs of the American
Puritans who originally came from England, he is far from what
readers would look for in a white male hero: he is slight, devious,
and relies on magic rather than physical strength, not to mention
the fact that he proves to be a traitor in the final battle
of Seven Soldiers #1. Sir Justin, on the other hand, as a member
of the Knights of the Broken Table of Camelot would seem to
fit the requirements. As a noble English knight, we may infer
that he is English and appears to be Caucasian. He is a true
hero, who believes in defeating the evil forces until the last.
Yet, in the final issue of Shining Knight, it is revealed that
Sir Justin is actually Justina, “a girl knight” (2.113) who
willingly dressed and passed as a man to help save Camelot and
Sir Galahad, a knight she is in love with . Thus, the typical
Figure 3-2
55
white male heroic figures that have held center stage in superhero
comics are significantly missing in Seven Soldiers, rejecting
one of the most common stereotypes of the genre.
Rejection Two: Ideological Superheroes
In defining what it means for a character to be a superhero,
Peter Coogan refers to a court case from 1952, in which the
creator of Wonder Man’s character was accused of copying
Superman’s, and in which the presiding Judge Learned Hand,
provided a definition of a superhero in his opinion. Coogan
explains Hand’s three elements and expands on their meaning
as follows. Coogan claims that, first of all, “superpowers are
one of the most identifiable elements of the superhero genre”
(Coogan 78). This, alongside the obvious, recognizably
superhuman powers of, for example, Superman (super strength,
the ability to fly, x-ray vision, etc.), also includes the
exceptional human “physical strength and mental abilities” of
Batman that “allow him to fight crime alongside his more powerful
brethren,” though he is not exactly “super” (Coogan 83). The
second element is “identity,” consisting of the hero’s
“codename[,] . . . costume[,]” and “secret identity” (Coogan
78). The costume and codename helps the superhero to become
an icon, while the secret identity separates the superhero from
the ordinary citizen underneath the mantle. The function of
this secret identity varies individually; some may wish to
56
preserve their privacy, and others may want to keep their alter
ego a secret to protect their loved ones. Most importantly,
the third element is the “mission,” which usually motivates
the superheroes to save the innocent from disasters, or more
likely, keep them safely out of the hands of evil. The superhero’s
“mission” must be “selfless” and “not . . . intended to benefit
or further his own agenda . . . because someone who does not
act selflessly to aid others in times of need is not heroic”
(Coogan 77). Though having a “mission” is not limited to
superheroes, for it defines the “hero” aspect that can be found
in other action genres such as Westerns, it does give the
superheroes a purpose and an essential reason for existence.
These three features have solidified to become crucial
ingredients to a superhero that can easily be identified in
all the major superheroes, including the Big Three of both Marvel
and DC.
It is interesting, therefore, that none of the heroes in
Seven Soldiers, save Sir Justin, completely fulfill all three
of these traditional superhero requirements. Though Zatanna
is the most famous of the seven characters, with numerous
appearances in several different series since her 1964 debut,
the events in Identity Crisis (2004) are still fresh in fans’
memories: she, alongside other members of the Justice League,
was exposed for performing mind-wiping on villains after
shocking events. With her magic powers, Zatanna was responsible
57
for, not only wiping the villain’s memories, but also altering
his personality completely. The series revealed the
uncomfortable truths of moral ambiguity that can exist among
heroes, and while Identity Crisis is not referred to directly
in Seven Soldiers, it is part of the character’s and the DC
Universe’s history that constitute the subtext of her story,
making it difficult for readers to define her as an idealistic
superhero. In Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, Zatanna participates
in a support group for troubled superheroes, where she confesses
to using her magic powers for personal reasons, ending up in
a tragic accident. After these dreadful incidents, Zatanna,
having lost confidence, loses her powers. Deprived of her mission
along with her superpowers, Zatanna is a failed superhero.
None of the other remaining Soldiers is exactly a selfless
superhero. Frankenstein fights the forces of Sheeda, mainly
Melmoth, not out of selflessness, but rather because Melmoth’s
blood created Frankenstein, and he feels rage against being
brought to life in such way. Klarion only sets out from Limbo
Town because of curiosity towards the outside world, and fans
may note that he is destined to become a villain, as he has
been in most of his previous appearances in the DC Universe.
Jake Jordan becomes the Guardian because he was unemployed after
leaving the police force, and his father-in-law recommended
him. Alix Harrower, or Bulleteer, declares bluntly that she
is “not a superhero” (3) , though she later becomes one.
58
Thus, Sir Justin is the only member who completes the
power/identity/mission formula. Indeed he is physically human,
but his status as a Knight and his sense of justice and skill
in battle easily position him as “super.” His identity as the
Shining Knight is not a secret, with no distinction between
the Knight and Sir Justin, but both serve as disguises in a
sense, since he is actually the female Justina passing as a
man. Finally, out of all the Seven, Sir Justin is the most
selfless, for he pledges, as “one knight of Camelot” (1.165)
to fight against the prophecy of a coming Dark Age, led by the
Sheeda. Morrison’s subversive intent in creating this character
seems deliberate, in that the sole perfect superhero is a boy
(and a girl) who accidentally slips from Arthurian times to
the present, or in other words, is out of time. Sir Justin’s
character shows that the idealistic superhero image that has
been bound firmly into the genre for decades is literally out
of time, and only those of the past are able to occupy it as
comfortably as Sir Justin does.
Rejection Three: Typical Narrative Models
Finally, while crossovers and team ups between series are
common within the genre of superhero comics, the narrative model
Morrison uses in Seven Soldiers is unique, incorporating styles
and structures that are still relatively unknown within the
genre, but that may open up to new possibilities in the near
59
future. In an interview, Morrison explained that he “developed
a ‘modular’ storytelling technique” (Morrison qtd. in Popimage)
for this series, which he describes as the following:
Each issue is stand alone, each miniseries can be read
complete and the whole thing assembles like a jigsaw into
one huge epic with multiple, criss-crossing storylines,
ranging across a swathe of genres and human emotions
(Morrison qtd. in Popimage).
In other words, modular storytelling, which “ became a field
of study with the rise of video games,” is a “method of
storytelling that is a nonlinear arrangement of equal, yet
complete, modules” in which each module may be understood by
itself, “but when combined with other modules, it becomes a
larger, deliberate narrative” (King).
This form of serial storytelling also encourages audiences
to become more active in seeking out the threads of the narrative.
The previous reading experience was more passive and linear,
where the reader received the words and information as they
are given to them with each new issue of a comic series, but
the modular storytelling technique stimulates audiences into
looking for information themselves, even having the freedom
to decide whether or not to go all the way through certain
plotlines, and finally piecing the smaller story elements
together to form a whole. This narrative model in Seven Soldiers
means that readers may switch around the reading order or go
60
back and forth between the miniseries to fill in the blanks
Morrison purposely left open. In Seven Soldiers, Morrison
therefore disregards the notion, traditional not only in
superhero comics, but the act of reading most kinds of stories,
that reading is a linear process with a beginning, middle, and
end. The series leads to the readers adopting a reading style
that is still uncommon, but,
while it can prove extremely
difficult and challenging,
makes possible new ways of
experiencing the serial
comics narrative.
The seven miniseries of
Seven Soldiers thus can be
read in any order or as a
stand-alone, if one is not
following the grand
narrative. Each mini-series
illustrates the separate
challenges each protagonist
faces, and more importantly,
each features its own
individual themes and styles of art and narrative to further
distinguish the seven modules from one another. For instance,
Shining Knight has a hand-painted look instead of the traditional
Figure 3-3
61
bold, flat coloring, appropriate for the fantastic atmosphere
of the character and his origins, but the series also tends
to be naturalistic in its line art, merging fantasy and reality,
for some scenes are set in the dirty streets of New York (fig.
3-3). In Bulleteer, Morrison comments on the fetishizations
of female superheroes and how some creators are using them to
draw women in gratuitously sexualized costumes and positions,
and he uses the visuals to argue his point. The penciller, Yanick
Paquette draws Alix in sensual poses that appear much too forced
to be natural, wearing revealing outfits on almost every panel
she appears in. Even her metallic skin, colored by colorist
Alex Sinclair in bright bluish whites, is sexual in that it
shines so that her
breasts that are
overemphasized
(figure 3.4).
However,
Zatanna’s use of art
is even more
exceptional in that
unlike Shining
Knight where the art establishes atmosphere with its colors,
or Bulleteer, where the line art plays a part in delivering
a message, Zatanna’s magical abilities allow both her and the
Figure 3-4
62
penciller, Ryan Sook, to radically explore and exceed the spaces
of comic book pages. Because magic, where there are no
limitations, enables characters to jump through dimensions,
Zatanna and Zor, whom she battles, crash and fall through panels,
rip and crumple them (fig. 3-5), and even reach out of her page
and panels, towards readers and the Seven Unknown Men who are
outside of her
two-dimensional
universe. In Seven
Soldiers of
Victory: Part One,
which brings all the
miniseries
together into the
grand narrative,
artist and colorist
J.H. Williams III
copies each of the
different visual
styles of the seven miniseries, sometimes using several
different styles within a single page, to unite what were
individual storyline into the grand narrative (fig. 3-6).
Figure 3-5
64
Experimenting with the New Metafiction
This acknowledgement of a greater narrative existing
outside the separate modules shows Morrison’s recognition of
Seven Soldiers as a metafictional work that explores of the
medium of comics and its seriality, as well as comments on how
they function. These metafictional aspects are further
contributed by the characters of the Seven Unknown Men and
Zatanna.
The metafictional text is “extreme[ly] self-[conscious]
about language, literary form and the act of writing fictions”
and “draws attention to its status as an artifact” (Waugh 2).
Metafictional comics, then, where characters are explicitly
written to draw attention to the fact that they are creations
influenced by writers, are not especially new. In fact, Morrison
favors metafictional style; Animal Man #26 (1990) is still known
as one of the most famous metafictional comics in the genre.
Here, Morrison inserts himself into the comics pages, and through
his interactions with Animal Man, Morrison crumbles the fourth
wall between the creator and creation.
Morrison makes a similar meta-fictional move with Zatanna,
in Zatanna: Part Four. During her battle with Zor, formerly
one of the Unknown Men but now gone rogue and has become a villain,
she feels her surroundings go “soft and [flip],” and hears “voices
coming from nowhere” (3). She starts crawling towards the reader,
and hoping to “contact them” (3), she reaches out as if trying
65
to break the barrier, and presses her hand against the page,
which is drawn in a life-size scale (fig. 3-7), hoping to break
through the fourth
wall, thus
challenging the
usual boundaries of
superhero comics art
and narrative. This
allows her to slip
into a dimension
above hers, where the
Seven Unknown Men
resides.
Zatanna is now
a different world,
recalling the
mysterious cottage
in Slaughter Swamp,
that exists as “one
of those in-between
places” (1.12) from
Part Zero. Here she feels “eyes, tens of thousands of eyes,
in different times and places,” or in other words, eyes of readers
and creators from our reality, “all converging on [her]” (3).
The Unknown Men explain to her that they “patch and . . . sew”
Figure 3-7
66
to “make sure the fabric of [the DC] universe is kept in good
repair” (3). Zatanna, therefore, consciously becomes a
fictional creation, who had not only reached out to her readers,
but also towards her creators in a dimension between reality
and fiction, which are usually separated, never to be merged.
Seven Soldiers’s metafictional commentary however, takes
a step beyond merely reflecting the comics medium and the
superhero genre by criticizing the superhero genre and its
industry. Appearances of such reflections started to become
recognizable with Kingdom Come and Marvels, which criticized
the dark paths the superhero comics industry is taking, and
Seven Soldiers does this as well. Throughout the series, Morrison
comments on the recent superhero comics industry’s tendency
to strip away its pasts and traditions in hopes of creating
something new. Gradually, works have started to incorporate
a new form of metafiction, where the commentary reaches out
farther than the mechanism of graphic narratives, and into the
culture of the superhero genre. This is a quite recent
achievement, for the superhero genre now finally has enough
history for contemporary readers to examine and consider
critically, how the genre functions through its narratives,
industry, and fictional universes. Superhero comics thus are
now able to examine not only present societies, but also their
own extensive publishing and fictional histories as well.
67
Seven Soldiers of Victory both looks into and disregards
traditions in superhero comics, as it introduces new ideas,
styles, and structures into the genre. The prologue sets out
one of the themes of this series: that superhero comics must
keep on evolving and adapt to its contemporary times, rather
than clinging to traditions built decades ago. To explore this
idea, Morrison dedicates a superhero team where none of the
characters are stereotypical. Many of the mainstream
superheroes of the previous ages were Caucasian males,
especially since many of them were created in the forties and
fifties, and even if the characters themselves are unique
individually, superheroes usually share similar
characteristics traits. However, none of the Seven Soldiers
conform to the stereotypes, and none of them can be considered
an idealistic superhero, besides the Shining Knight, who does
not belong in the twenty-first century. Morrison also brings
in a narrative model relatively unknown within comics, and shows
there is no need for narrative structures to follow traditional
models, but that they too can be updated. This, with the addition
of creative use of graphics and visual style, which separates
comics from regular novels, Morrison’s innovative work pushes
superhero comics that were held back by tradition into modern
times, keeping the genre fresh and still, after all these years,
open to endless possibilities.
68
Chapter IV
Not Too Old, Not Too New: Part Two,
Respecting the Past in Seven Soldiers of Victory
Despite Morrison’s insistence on change and progressions
I have examined in the previous section, we cannot disregard
the respect Morrison has towards the past Ages of superhero
comics. All Star Superman (2006-8) is one example where
Morrison’s appreciation for older comics can be seen. The series
was part of the All-Star line by DC Comics, which allowed major
comics creators to create new storylines for famous DC heroes
without any restrictions by the publisher. While the series
is frequently described as “fundamentally antinostalgic”
(Singer 257), Morrison explains enthusiastically that in
preparation, he “read various accounts of Superman’s creation
and development as a brand,” and “read every Superman story
and watched every Superman movie [he] could lay [his] hands
on, from the Golden Age to the present day” (Morrison qtd. in
Smith). He does admit to “recreating characters,” but only
through “extract[ing], purify[ing] and refin[ing]” the
“essential ‘Superman-ness’ that powered” the comics and
character (Morrison qtd. in Smith).
Another example originated in September 2011, when DC
re-launched their comics universe by cancelling all their titles
and starting them again from issue one, naming Morrison the
69
writer for Superman’s Action Comics. Describing his run on the
series, he says he is “looking back at the original Superman
as a champion of the oppressed,” which was the catch-phrase
given to Superman upon his first appearance,” and not necessarily
a figure of law and order or patriotism,” which was exactly
how Superman was written in The Dark Knight Returns, as a rival
of Batman, who seeks justice and justice only (Morrison qtd.
in Thill). Morrison also claims that he and artist Rags Morales
hoped to “honor [the] spirit” of Superman’s first creators,
out of respect for Jerry Siegel’s narrative and Joe Shuster’s
art (Morrison qtd. in Thill). In both cases, Morrison was given
an opportunity to update Superman’s character. Yet, in neither
does he blatantly criticize past comics, but instead, takes
concepts built in the past and developed over time, and adapts
them into the present without turning his works into “a dinosaur
killer and wrecker of worlds” (Morrison 195) like Moore’s
Watchmen.
New Characters vs. the Old
Along with acknowledgement of the importance of past
superhero works, Morrison’s wariness towards the Dark Age’s
revisionism are explicitly reflected in the innovative Seven
Soldiers. This can first be seen in Part Zero. Here, a Golden
Age hero, the Vigilante, recruits heroes to finish his
“unfinished business” (1.24) from the late 1800s, or in other
70
words, defeat the “Miracle Mesa monster” (1.31) which is later
revealed as the Sheeda. Because Bulleteer backed out at the
last minute, the hero team has only six members instead of the
seven as the prophecy mandates, and thus automatically, these
heroes are destined to doom, but their deaths are hinted through
the characters themselves compared to the later more successful
Seven Soldiers.
The Vigilante, like the Shining Knight, has been “kicked
around in time” (1.23) and is a man out of time. The Shining
Knight, though he originally belongs in Arthurian times is
successful in the series as he promises to become the defender
of the world he was thrown into, and a white t-shirt and a pair
of jeans suddenly appear over his golden armor, suggesting he
had successfully modernized himself. The Vigilante, on the other
hand, clings to the past. Tossed into the twenty-first century,
in his never-changing cowboy attire, he is still pursuing the
monster he encountered more than a century ago. He carries him
a newspaper clip dated 1875, along with a picture of himself
with his former superhero team, the original Seven Soldiers
of Victory. Unlike the Shining Knight, the Vigilante lives in
the past, and with Morrison’s argument that superhero comics
must adapt to its times, he fails his mission, resulting in
his death.
The other five recruits of his, including I, Spyder (former
The Spider, updated by the Unknown Men) who was transformed
71
by the Seven Unknown Men in Slaughter Swamp, are the antithesis
of the Vigilante, in that they are all characters created for
this series. While some characters such as Boy Blue and I, Spyder
are related to forgotten Golden Age superheroes, there are no
homages to them as we find among the members of the (successful)
Seven Soldiers. These new superheroes have no past and are flat
in character. More importantly, they obviously lack in mission,
one of the important traits of superheroes. Shelly Gaynor, or
The Whip, the narrator of Part Zero, is a superhero only for
the excitement, contacting the Vigilante because she craves
new adventures, for “the buildings [she] jump[s] from aren’t
tall enough” (1.19) anymore. No background is provided to readers
about Gimmix other than the fact that she has gotten a face
lift. Boy Blue is a kid wearing what he calls a “Ghost Suit,”
with a weaponized Horn provided by a third party, and Dyno-Mite
Dan is a “hero-vestite” who bought magical “Mystery Rings” online
(1.27). None of these wannabe heroes are most devoted to saving
innocents, and are more interested in amusing themselves playing
superhero.
Through this failed team of flat, new heroes, Morrison also
criticizes the tendency within the profit-seeking superhero
comics industry to create random new characters. As Shelly Gaynor
insists: “Work out hard. Expose yourself to alien rays. Get
born a mutant. Have a grudge…Seems easy, doesn’t it?” (1.13-4)
Creating superheroes is now extremely easy with many usable
72
tropes existing within the genre, but as a result, there is
often no originality in the characters, or appeal to fans. By
bringing back superheroes created in the past, Morrison argues
that there are already perfectly useful materials available,
ready to be renewed to fit the present era, not entirely
disregarded.
Morrison’s reluctance to succumb to extreme revisionism
is further demonstrated through Shelly Gaynor’s character and
the art depicting her character, The Whip. With her character,
he further elaborates his argument that superheroes are destined
to doom when they neglect their predecessors. Firstly,
Morrison’s wariness towards The Dark Knight Returns, and
negative attitudes toward the classic works of revisionism,
especially Watchmen, are infamous among superhero fans. For
instance, in an interview in 2007, conducted by 2000 AD, he
stated, “Dark Knight is a brilliant piece of Reagan-era fiction
and Watchmen is very, very clever in its architecture, but both
books felt pompous and concept album-y to me as a young man
in the 80s” (Morrison qtd. in Barnett). Later in Supergods,
Morrison claims that the characters of Watchmen are
“conventional Hollywood stereotypes” (Morrison 204) and the
narratives have “story flaws” (Morrison 205); he does not attempt
to hide his “negative judgment” (Morrison 204). He felt
“exhausted,” he says, by the comics industry only “concentrating
on the violence and sex and perceived realism” and worried about
73
how “themes of brutal urban vigilantism were playing out in
an increasingly stylized set of post-Miller gestures” (Morrison
230).
The Whip is exactly the type of superhero born after Moore
and Miller’s influences on superhero comics. First of all, her
appearance as a superhero is extremely sexualized. Her studded
mask, thigh high boots, and her extremely revealing costume
make her look like a dominatrix. The spread page features her
jumping buildings in a suggestive pose, where readers’ eyes
are drawn to the pale skin of her thighs that stand out in
comparison to her black boots and costume. On the next page,
where she comes in
for a landing,
readers are only
presented with
her buttocks and
thighs, and when
she finally comes
crashing down on
the crooks she was
after, her thighs
are spread wide, and her breasts are positioned right at the
center of the panel; once again, her revealing body draws readers’
attention rather than her heroic actions (fig. 4-1). The first
Figure 4-1
74
panel on the next page shows a silhouette of her weapon of choice,
a whip, but with her sexually suggestive poses and costume,
it invites questions as to whether she is actually a superhero
fighting villains, or a dominatrix figure designed to provide
some excitement. Shelly herself seems to be unsure of her identity
as a superhero, for she asks, “how do you know when you’ve become
a superhero and not just a crazy fetish person with a death
wish?” (1.19).What separates The Whip from Bulleteer, whose
character also exemplifies the sexualization and fetishizations
of superheroes, is that The Whip takes on violence in her
superhero persona alongside sex.
The style of art suddenly changes when The Whip is back
to being Shelly Gaynor. In these pages, red and black are the
primary colors. The only light source in the room comes from
her computer, creating sharp, black shadows on and around her,
as she stands in only her underwear. In contrast, the bright
red of blood is eye-catching, as she murmurs that “there’s always
blood[,] someone’s blood” (1.17). More importantly, the jet
black shadows in sharp lines, equal-sized grid panels,
monologues that reflect her darkness, such as her fantasy of
dying as a superhero, and sensual art that focuses on her
sexuality (not as obviously as her action scenes as The Whip,
but more subtly, through close-ups of her full, red lips), recall
the noir-inspired creative style of Frank Miller in works such
as Sin City, which even has an installment titled Sex and Violence
75
(fig. 4-2, 4-3).
Similarly, violence,
sex, and the darkness
that comes with them
are central traits of
The Whip, and with no
mission to focus on,
she is flat and
replaceable. Though
she tries to become
a true superhero, she
is destined to fail,
just as the dark,
unoriginal
superheroes, whose
main
characteristics are
usually either
violence, darkness, or both, that followed immediately after
Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns did not always succeed.
The Sheeda: Destroyer of Worlds
The villains of the series, the Sheeda, too, function as
a comment on importance of temporality in superhero comics:
Figure 4-2
Figure 4-3
76
both the extreme revisionism that destroys tradition and respect
for past works. The Sheeda are not alien species existing outside
Earth, but instead, they are human races from the future, about
a billion years from the present. Their civilization was in
ruins until they discover time traveling, which they use to
travel back to when civilizations on Earth flourishes to its
highest moments. In this way they may devour those earlier
cultures and people to ensure the group of seven soldiers from
the prophecy do not rise to threaten the Sheeda into extinction.
Another reason is to enslave people to destroy more civilizations
in the future, as well as breed, so that the Sheeda can continue
their progeny. Klarion and the people of Limbo Town are an example
of interbreeding the Sheeda has left behind.
Among the Sheeda is Neh-Buh-Loh, who serves as the huntsman
to the Sheeda Queen, Gloriana Tenebrae. Unlike the race of Sheeda
and their queen, Neh-Buh-Loh is not Morrison’s own creation,
though like the Seven Soldiers, he has added his own spice into
the character, and updated him to fit the needs of present comics.
Neh-Buh-Loh first appeared in Justice League of America #100
(1972) as the Nebula Man, responsible for scattering the original
Seven Soldiers throughout time. Morrison adapts this storyline
and characters into his work, by bringing the Vigilante, one
of the members thrown through time, into the narrative, and
explaining how Neh-Buh-Loh, or the Nebula Man, was already
looking for the team of seven for his Queen.
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Here, in his Seven Soldiers, Morrison revives the Nebula
Man and creates the Sheeda, in order to craft an allegory of
extreme comics revisionism destroying past and traditional
Golden and Silver Age values and superheroes. The Nebula Man
is part of the future human race, which has no regard for the
past or tradition, threatening to arrive any time to endanger
the present superhero universes. He had already attempted to
exterminate the original Seven Soldiers, a team created during
the Golden Age. Thus, the actions of the Nebula Man and the
Sheeda represent the destructiveness of extreme revisionism
seen in works like Watchmen and The Dark Knight. They devour
flourishing cultures, just as revisionist works have fed on
the genre, and survivors must pick themselves up in a completely
different state, never able to return to how they were, before
the attack. Therefore, in order to save present superhero comics
and their universe, Morison brings back old characters to fight
against the extreme revisionism and destruction of tradition
represented by the Sheeda.
The Final Victory
Finally, in Seven Soldiers of Victory: Part One, Morrison’s
commentary concludes with the brief story of one of the Seven
Unknown Men, included between the final battle of the Seven
Soldiers and the Sheeda. The Unknown Men, as I have mentioned
previously, represents Morrison, the comics creator, who
78
resides in a dimension above the comics pages, and has control
over what happens within them. One of these Men, whom I will
refer to as Morrison, stated that the superhero comics universe
is a “work of too many hands to ever fit properly” (4.210).
Because of the extensive seriality of superhero comics under
countless creators, writers, artists, and editors, the
fictional world is like “a miser’s coat” (4.210) where pieces
of mismatched cloth are sewn together. That is why the superhero
universe needs people like the Unknown Men, who “patch and . . .
sew” to “make sure the fabric of [the fictional] universe is
kept in good repair” (3).
Zachary Zor is the eighth of the Seven, the one who has
gone rogue, and tried to disrupt the order of the universes
by creating the Sheeda. Further developing an analysis of the
meta-commentary in Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, fans have
speculated about the possibility of Zor representing Alan Moore
(see Barbelith), for not only do their names rhyme, but Zor,
in Zatanna, gloats about his “magnificent beard” (3), a famous
physical trait of Moore. This speculation accords with my
interpretation, considering how the Sheeda, which is Zor’s
creation, constitute part of an allegory of extreme revisionism,
for which Moore is partially responsible through his Watchmen.
In Part One, Morrison takes back Zor’s top hat, a powerful
symbolic item for magicians. By taking the hat back, the Unknown
Men with their respect for the past will take over the stage
79
of superhero comics now, instead of Moore, whose existence and
influence had dominated the comics industry with his immense
popularity. Morrison then tells Zor how the Unknown Men, as
well as the whole universe, “played out [Zor’s] nasty little
game” (4.210) where the future of the comics world in Seven
Soldiers and the superhero comics world more generally is
threatened by
the extinction
of history and
engulfing it
with utter
darkness. Now
with the top
hat and power
back in his
hands,
Morrison
proceeds to
trap Zor in a completely black void (fig. 4-4), which suggests
the darkness of post-Watchmen superhero comics. As if to reject
the hopelessness of the Dark Age comics, Morrison informs Zor
at the last moment that the characters “all live happily ever
after” (4.210). Indeed, as Morrison promises, in the final page
of epilogue and the whole series, Mister Miracle, who appeared
to have died while playing his part to save the universe, bursts
Figure 4-4
80
out of his grave as if to signify the revival of superhero comics.
With disrespectful revisionism put in its place, superhero
comics and its universe is able to go back to expanding its
seriality with hope for the future.
81
Conclusion
Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight
Returns were two works that pushed superhero comics that
audiences felt were outdated in a new direction, towards values
and styles more suited to contemporary society. Yet, such
innovation came with the expense of past works and traditions,
with their idealistic superheroes that represented hopefulness
and where victory was always with the good. Furthermore, Watchmen
and The Dark Knight Returns were so successful in their revisions
of the image of superheroes, that subsequent superhero comics
followed their example by turning superheroes gritty in
narratives full of violence, where the lines between good and
evil were blurred.
While such comics were popular at first, and attracted
older audiences, some creators felt a decline in creativity
within the superhero genre, for the darkness that enveloped
the superhero comics industry had limited the variety in
characters and narratives. It was around then that Kurt Busiek
and Mark Waid announced their Marvels and Kingdom Come, both
drawn and painted by Alex Ross, which attempted to bring back
the neglected Golden and Silver Age values of superheroes.
Through these works, the creators and artist expressed their
fears about the destruction of superhero comics under the new
wave of dark heroes, and pleaded with readers to remember the
82
days where superheroes brought happiness to their fans instead
of fear and insecurity. Marvels and Kingdom Come turned out
successful in their mission, for they brought recognition to
new target audiences, creating the nostalgia market. With recent
DC Comics’s relaunch of their universe and series, retelling
origins of fans’ favorite heroes, or constant remakes of past
works, the sense of nostalgia still remains in the industry,
even today.
What these two trends show, and fans, as well as critics
tend to point out, is that superhero comics were heading in
opposite directions. On one hand, superhero comics were leaving
their histories behind to create something completely new, while
on the other hand, recent comics seem to criticize the innovative
works’ approach in revising superheroes. While these readings
of works and comics trends are not mistaken, they are, however,
extreme. As T. S. Eliot argues in “The Tradition of the Individual
Talent,” a successful poet (or comics creator in this case)
must recognize the works of their predecessors, and fuse the
past with the contemporary writings. The uniqueness of the
superhero genre comes from their long archive of serial
storytelling, where each of the past comics builds on and adds
to the history that is already there, creating the superhero
image of the present. Therefore, traditions and history from
past works cannot be completely cut off in creating something
new. This applies not only to dark works influences by Moore
83
and Miller, but also nostalgic works that may seem to reject
them, and as Eliot says, the past and present must come together.
Marvels, for example, though at a glance may be absolutely
nostalgic does in fact follow Eliot’s argument that it recognizes
what revisionist works had introduced into the genre, and
expresses a successful future for the dark heroes with an
appearance young Danny Ketch, who will later become the Ghost
Rider.
Following Eliot’s views on tradition and innovation
reveals interesting readings of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers
of Victory. Seven Soldiers not only rejects conservative
traditions in such areas as race and gender, along with superhero
clichés, but also introduces a new narrative structure and
reading style to superhero comics. Morrison in his chapters
explicitly tells readers that with the series, he hopes to update
superheroes, for they must constantly change to fit present
society. In this way, Seven Soldiers thematizes revisions and
innovations, going fiercely against being kept behind in time.
However, Morrison does not completely dismiss superhero comics
history, but rather, seems wary against extreme revisionism
in the likes of Moore and Miller. He willingly brings in
decades-old characters to save the universe from an unknown
threat from the future, creating an allegory of revisionist
works trying to destroy tradition. With Seven Soldiers, Morrison
comments that superhero comics must constantly be renewed to
84
keep up with their readers, but always keeping some engagement
with the past, which created the materials creators have to
work on, and fans to enjoy.
Works such as Kingdom Come, Marvels, and Seven Soldiers
also brought to superhero comics a new direction of
self-reflexivity. Many superhero comics have already been to
some degree meta-fictional, where works themselves reflect on
the medium of comics, but recent works do not consider only
the medium but also the genre: they study the superhero genre
and industry, becoming superhero comics about superhero comics.
This is mainly because superhero comics have, with time, built
their archive with seemingly endless continuity. When
superheroes were still young, creators were only able to develop
it, but now, with decades of publications, they are in a position
to critically analyze the works of the past, and turn them into
materials for new comics.
Rather than rejecting past conventions, characters, and
universes, superhero comics today are developing increasingly
complex revisions with a growing tendency to comment on the
superhero genre and its own history. For instance, Morrison
is currently writing Multiversity for DC Comics, a series that
focuses on the many parallel Earths of the DC Universe, rather
than the main one. With Multiversity, Morrison reexamines the
continuity of superhero comics as a whole. His series considers
the DC Universe before the reboot in 2011, commenting on certain
85
events, as well as the comics universes of other publishers,
such as Marvel, through parodied Earths. Because it is still
in progress, it is impossible to say where this highly
self-reflexive new series will take readers as it pursues new
narrative and visual possibilities, but it shows that Morrison’s
work merits further study in the future.
Superhero comics, therefore, after decades of changes
in art and narrative styles, are still evolving. Time and
innovative writers and artists have introduced into the comics
medium new styles and structures that were unheard of in the
past. Yet, as Eliot’s argument as well as my analysis on
innovative and nostalgic writers reveal, the past, while it
should not be the only factor to follow, must not be hastily
thrown aside. Rather, both tradition and innovation shall be
valued, and infused together to create powerful new works. The
self-reflexive comics that have appeared recent years is doing
exactly this, as archives of superhero comics are analyzed in
relation to how they have been influencing currently running
series.
86
Notes
1 In my thesis, I will follow Scott McCloud’s example of
defining “comics” as a medium. The term will be “Plural in form,
used with a singular verb” (McCloud 9). Within the medium of
comics, graphic novels, while the term is not strictly defined,
are books with comics content. Alternative comics are comic
books with contents other than the mainstream superheroes.
Finally, comic books will signify comics periodicals.
2 That is, until the recent DC universe’s relaunch in 2011,
where Barbara is up and moving again as Batgirl.
3 Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil in the 1970s had already
started Batman’s evolution into a gothic hero, but the darkness
is not as notable as Miller’s.
4 Though later appearances of Sir Justin (or Ystin) in
series Demon Knights (2011-13), claims that the character is
neither a “man or woman” but “both” (Demon Knights Volume 3)
and prefers male pronouns, his gender identification in Seven
Soldiers is unclear. However, because readers see Justina in
a skirt, and learn that she will be known in the future as Queen
Ystina the Good, in the last few pages of Seven Soldiers #1,
I will refer to Sir Justin as “she” while she is Justina, and
when the character appears as Sir Justin/Shining Knight, I will
refer to him as a “he.”
5 There are no page numbers for Seven Soldiers of Victory:
88
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