The Superhero Reader

Introduction

xI InTroduCTIon To wrench the human soul from its moorings, to immerse it in terrors, ice, flames, and raptures to such an extent that it is liberated from all petty displeasure, gloom, and depression as by a flash of lightening: what paths lead to this goal? And which of them do so most surely? Friedrich Nietzsche (1967 [1887]: 139) For if ever there does appear upon this planet a tightly knit minority of really superior people, it will be the end of all the rest of mankind and mankind knows it, not having come through a billion-odd years of evolutionary struggle for nothing. PhiliP Wylie (1942: 139–40) ComiCs is an art form; superheroes are a genre. this terse distinCtion lies at the heart of current scholarship on comics.1 While some readers still conflate comic books and superheroes, the recent emergence of interdisciplinary comics studies presupposes that comics, including their long-form incarnation, graphic novels, can be much more. Indeed, comics can advance myriad storytelling agendas. It is no surprise that, until recently, the most compelling contributions to comics scholarship focused on historical, political , autobiographical, avant-garde, and other “serious minded” comics, for it is precisely these kinds of studies that complicate or upend longstanding suppositions regarding the medium’s inherently juvenile and unserious nature.2 If journalists typically depict the world of comics through the lens of box office receipts and costumed convention goers, it makes sense that academics might concentrate on material that is less likely to be mocked on the evening news, or by colleagues. The struggle for professional respectability has had a high cost, however. Even as academic specialists have rightly insisted on the depth and range of comics, some persist in downplaying the superhero genre’s expressive potential, metaphoric adaptability, and historical durability. Superhero comics are not the same thing as comics per se, but they are integral to the development of the american comic book, and therefore to the history of the form. admittedly, the genre has roots outside of comics: antecedents for the superhero can be xII InTroduCTIon traced back through pulp literature to ancient myths and legends, what Joseph Campbell called “the basic images of ritual, mythology, and vision” (18). But superheroes are intertwined with comics history to an extent that is not true of other major multimedia genres such as science fiction, horror, romance, or the western. all of those genres, and more, have been very important to comics , but the superhero stands apart. From the standpoint of English-language comics, at least, the superhero is not just another genre, but one that has made all the difference. Superheroes have played a central role in the story of comic books almost from their inception. Moreover, despite the genre’s relative dormancy from the late 1940s through the late 1950s, superheroes have stood the test of time. Indeed the superhero has been a staple of the medium and, since the sixties, the one overwhelmingly dominant market genre. as a result, the sheer volume of superhero comics that have been published over the years is staggering. Indeed, the major superhero universes constitute one of the most expansive storytelling canvases ever fashioned in any culture. Moreover, the characters inhabiting these fictional universes are immensely influential, having achieved iconic recognition around the world. Their images and adventures have also influenced other art forms, such as film, videogames, and prose fiction. The porous boundary that separates superhero studies from comics fandom may help explain the discomfort that many academics feel in relation to the genre. While fan-based knowledge is increasingly valued in the academy, fannishness is still regarded as, almost by definition, a symptom of a failure to professionalize. But the forward march of comics studies depends not on resisting genre-based storytelling and its attendant fan culture, but on recognizing what superhero artists and writers bring to the table. as Ben saunders usefully observes in an essay titled “On the Place of Superhero Studies within Comics Studies”: It will be better for the future of Comics Studies if we refuse to transform generic distinctions into hierarchical ones. We don’t need to have our own version of the fight that some music critics got into back in the 1970s over the merits of rock versus disco (or that a rather earlier generation of literary critics got into over the merits of poetry versus the novel). The discipline we want to create together can surely be big enough to contain appreciative studies of...