The Superhero Reader

Masked Heroes

99 Masked Heroes rIChard reynoldS Reprinted by permission from Superheroes: A Modern Mythology (University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 7–25. batman, superman, spider-man, and Wonder Woman are among the most widely known fictional characters ever conceived. Created as comic-book heroes, they remain more widely known through television, the movies and (in the case of Batman and superman) through a vigorous presence in american and European popular culture that ensures their recognition by millions who have never read a Batman comic or seen a Superman film. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman1 have remained continuously in print and involved in an unbroken sequence of new adventures for over fifty years [now seventy— eds.]. Yet the medium from which they spring—the 6" x 9" four-color comic book—continues to be (at least in north american and British culture) a marginalized channel of communication held by many to be an irredeemably corrupt and corrupting form of discourse, or else suitable only for children and the semi-literate. In consequence, the adult superhero readership (a sub-section of the adult comic readership as a whole) has come to identify itself as a small and very cohesive subculture. Specialist comic-book retailers, “marts,” and full-scale conventions are the outward signs of this cohesion, as is the highly organized marketplace for buying, selling, and collecting old comics. If connoisseurship and value to the collector alone gave access to the privileged world of high culture, superhero comics would have been there long ago. For the cultural student, superhero comics present a number of immediate paradoxes: a popular art form traditionally known for its apparently hegemonic and sometimes overtly authoritarian texts; a publishing genre which began to gain a degree of cultural respectability by ducking “underground” at least partially for its distribution; an art-form which has been handled (if at all) with disdain by the literary establishment, and yet has built up its own lively and heuristic critical discourse through what is still rather misleadingly 100 rIChard reynoldS known as the “fan press”;2 and, finally, a body of contemporary mythology from which television and Hollywood have plundered material as diverse as the campy 1960s Batman TV show, the apparent artlessness of the Christopher Reeve Superman cycle, and the overwrought gothic bravura of the 1989 Batman movie. The superhero genre is tightly defined and defended by its committed readership —often to the exasperation of writers and artists, many of whom have proclaimed it to be a worn-out formula from as long ago as the 1970s. But the dinosaur refuses to keel over and die, and dominates the economics of the american comics industry. The chief superhero characters remain its most widely understood and recognized creations—to the annoyance of writers and artists who would like to bring the wider possibilities of the comic book (or graphic novel)3 to the attention of the general public. an attempt to define the limits of the genre can best be made as part of a broader exploration of the heroes themselves—differing as they do from each other sometimes as much as Gandhi and the Lone Ranger. The costumed superhero burst into seemingly fully fledged existence in June 1938, with the appearance on american newsstands of Action Comics #1, featuring Superman’s first ever appearance in print. The new arrival proved enormously popular, and quickly led to a host of imitations and new ideas along similar lines—from Batman, Wonder Woman, and the Sub-Mariner—all with us to this day—to such obscure creations as The arrow, shock Gibson, and the Masked Marvel.4 america’s entry into World War two gave the superheroes a whole new set of enemies, and supplied a complete working rationale and worldview for a super-patriotic superhero such as captain america.5 This so-called Golden age6 of comics and superhero comics in particular lasted up to the late 1940s, when the bulk of the costumed superhero titles folded as a result of falling readerships. Only Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman came through the lean years of the early 1950s without a break in publication. The spotlight had shifted elsewhere—to crime comics, western comics, horror comics. as is well known, it was the excesses of the horror comics that led indirectly to the renaissance of the superhero genre. The bloody guts and gore of Entertaining Comics’7 Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror,8 and other titles both from EC and rival publishers led to the...