Heroes like Gods

I recently wrote a blog called Myths comparing our modern comic book superheroes to the mythic heroes and gods of various ancient cultures going back to the Greeks and Romans. I was wondering this morning why we have heroes at all, particularly "super" ones? What do we get from heroes that we don't get from the regular people in our lives?

The immediate answer is that people are flawed. I don't know anyone (me included) who isn't screwed up or bent out of shape in one way or another. We all have our biases, perspectives, issues, and angst. We used to look up to celebrities such as actors and politicians, but history tells us that those people, in real life, were just as human as anyone else and had just as many problems as the rest of us...maybe more. It can be a real let down to admire old time heroes of the movies and TV like Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger, only to find out that these heroes are no different than you and me. Acting is a job, not a calling and Clayton Moore was an actor who played a hero, not the hero himself (and I should mention that both Rogers and Moore were very fine men who I admire greatly...I'm not criticizing them at all).

Admiring politicians is even a worse option. I can't think of any political figure who, admired during their time in office, wasn't subsequently found to have engaged in very human behaviors that at least potentially could have tarnished their reputation. Up until Richard Nixon, the Office of the President of the United States was well respected and the infrastructure around the President works to make sure that any of the more "common" activities of the President never reached the public. Watergate changed all that.

During our last Presidential election, Barack Obama was so admired, his public image verged on Sainthood and Messianic. Even though he remains fabulously popular among his hard-core "fans", the past 16 months of his time in office have shown that, "audacity of hope" or not, he's still just a man.

The answer to why we have fictional heroes then, is that real life people can be a bit of a disappointment. Any time you fix your eyes on a person and decide to use them as a role model, they'll say or do something to knock themselves off the pedestal you've placed them on. Real life heroes may start out well, but like Icarus, they eventually fly too close to the sun, get burned, fall from grace and back to earth. The irony of the Greek and Roman gods (since I'm on the subject more or less) is that they tended to act just as human as anyone else, and even worse than most (and Zeus was a very bad boy...uh, "swan" in his "encounter with the mortal woman Leda).

In the modern age, we have heroes like Superman, a "strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men!" Of course, in his first appearence in Action Comics #1, he acted more like Batman in some ways. In order to get a corrupt politician to confess to his misdeeds, Superman hung him from the top of a lamp post (I'm writing this part from memory, so if you have a more accurate version of the end of Superman's first adventure, let me know) to "loosen his tongue", so to speak.

In 1938, the "tough guy" good guy was very popular, but eventually, Superman shifted into the classic "nice guy" good guy, almost all-powerful, but equally incorruptable. This version was best portrayed on the silver screen by Christopher Reeve who developed both Clark Kent and Superman as two separate identities. Both were still very good and admirable men (though Clark by necessity, had to be a bit of a coward). The George Reeves Superman of 1950s TV by comparison, though played lightly through most of the series, had his darker moments, such as the time when he dodged a crook coming at him with a knife (this is Superman, remember) so that the crook would trip and fall over a cliff to his death.

The Silver Age Superman was clean cut, pure of heart, and a really nice guy. Just what a bunch of boys around the age of 10 or 12 would want and need for a role model. Be strong, be good, help people, and don't smooch too much with your good looking reporter girlfriend.

It seems we may have come full circle though. Our comic book heroes have become more tarnished of late. Actually, since about the early 1970s. I've mentioned before about the iconic two-part Green Lantern/Green Arrow tale from 1971 titled Snowbirds Don't Fly where it's shown that Green Arrow's former "trusty sidekick" Speedy (Roy Harper) has become a heroin addict. Hardly the role model for impressionable pre-teens.

As I said in my article Reflections, comic books, like any other entertainment medium, are a reflection of the desires and morals of the age that produced them. It's not that people were really "goody-goody" in the 1950s and 60s, but, as a society, we needed our heroes to be that way. Even the "Dark Knight" was so clean cut and sappy that modern audiences would probably puke if they read some of the Batman comics from that time (or watched the 1960s Batman TV series that starred Adam West and Burt Ward).

While "nice guy" heroes are an inspiration, we always fail them because, as real human beings, we can never be perfect. In a sense, both the ancient and modern heroes are easier for real people to relate to because they more or less act like we do, only with super powers. If that's the case though, isn't it a bad thing to have a flawed, corruptable human being be so powerful that bullets bounce off their chest and they can incinerate an entire city with heat vision?

It's not that bad. Our superheroes are heroes because they face their "demons", the dark side of their personalities and struggle to do the right thing. The "Dark Knight" Batman walks the edge of the abyss each night, in danger of becoming that which he fights against, but never actually falls in...at least not for very long. Our heroes are heroes because they are like us, but they struggle and overcome their problems. They're super, because the amplification of abilities makes the struggle larger than life, drawing our attention into that world so that our existence can too seem more nobel and less mundane.

Like the gods of old, our heroes act like we do, but unlike the ancient gods, Superman, Batman, and a score of other superpowered beings do not give in to tempation to become as totally corrupt and self-indulgent as their powers would allow them to be (imagine a completely narcisstic Superman, for instance).

While we, in real life, can never be super, we can use our heroes as an example of what it's like to fight against the odds and win. Like our heroes, we can have set backs and reverses, but we're shown that we don't have to just give up. Like our heroes, there's always another issue and another chapter in which, even after the bitterest defeat, we can rise again, Phoenix-like from the ashes of our failures, and fight another day.

Our spirits, like Superman, can even fly.

Myths

I've been part of a small conversation on twitter about DC vs Marvel superheroes. I guess some folks can feel really impassioned and loyal to one group over the other. I've never seen it that way. I've enjoyed the stories of Superman, Batman, the Fantastic Four, and Spider-Man equally well. They all have something to say in their own particular ways and I think they're room in the universe for each one of them.

Another way to look at the superhero comic genre is as our modern mythic heroes. All you have to do is travel back in time a few decades to encounter another set of modern myths: The Lord of the Rings. Although based on much older mythic race types (elves, dwarves, dragons), JRR Tolkien tells a unique saga of heroism and the struggle against an ultimate evil, mirroring the post-World War II period in which he wrote his stories.

Go back much further, and you'll encounter heroes you truly recognize as classic myths, from the King Arthur legend all the way back to Greek and Roman heroes such as Heracles. Admittedly, I'm skipping over a large body of other, similar legendary characters, but this is a blog, not a dissertation.

Do Superman and the Hulk represent mythic heroes in the way Arthur and Heracles do? Probably only time will tell, since a legend or a classic is measured only by the test of time. True, Superman has been around since 1938 and Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Hulk since the early 1960s (when Marvel shifted from producing horror and science fiction anthologies to serial superhero stories), but the legends I'm talking about have been around for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Is one pantheon of "gods" better than another? I suppose if you were a pagan worshiper of one sort or another, you would answer "yes", however we don't (I hope) actually worship comic book superheroes. With that in mind, is one comic book publisher's heroes better than another's? Do we favor DC over Marvel or Marvel over DC for any true qualitative reasons?

It seems to come down to a matter of opinion. There are people who dynamically support one over the other and will fight (argue) to the end their viewpoint or position. That makes me the odd man out (my usual role), since I've found enjoyment in many different characters created by different publishers. I even enjoy some that many DC and Marvel fans have never heard of and would probably consider irrelevant (and such heroes will probably never have movies made about them).

If we don't "worship" these heroes, what do they do for us? On the most obvious level, they entertain us. They take us into a world that can't possibly exist (you have to suspend certain facts about reality to believe a man can fly) so that, for awhile, we can forget about the world that does exist. That's what fantasy entertainment is all about.

Then too, there's the telling of a story that touches us in some sensitive part of our humanity. The Dark Knight (2008) tells a story that is tragic and heroic, of a man, driven to be a hero by night, longing for release from his self-imposed purgatory. A white knight enters the arena and we all put our hopes on him, especially Batman, who seeks to be released from the mantle of the bat. Alas, the white knight falls in battle, and to save his reputation and the people he serves, Batman not only must defeat the villain but do something harder...he must become the villain and shun the light and salvation.

Put in those terms, Batman transcends the level of the costumed comic book hero and becomes something much greater, on the level of our historic mythic epics. As I said, though...only time will tell whether Batman or any of his kind will truly enter history in that fashion.

Some of you reading this will probably think I'm overstating the case. Popular entertainment comes and popular entertainment goes. Does anyone ever think of the Lone Ranger anymore? Does anyone consider the Shadow? How many other fictional heroes, once loved by millions, now lie abandoned in the dust of the past? Will we one day too abandon Batman and Spider-Man for someone or something else that seems more timely?

The Wounded Starfish

Heard a story once. Don't know how true it is. Probably isn't, but it makes a nice illustration. Here goes. Pay attention.

There was a starfish. They don't do much, at least as far as most people can tell. Something comes along and sees the starfish. Could have been a kid. Could have been a mean adult. Maybe just something that likes nibbling starfish.

Anyway, whatever it is, cuts off one of the arms of the starfish. I've never heard a starfish say "ouch", but it's still a rotten thing to do. Fortunately, like you probably know, the starfish grows the arm back.

Time passes. Something else comes along. Cuts off the starfish's arm..the same arm. Fortunately it grows back (kind of reminds me of Prometheus and his liver).

Time passes. It happens again. Same arm gets lost. Grows back.

This keeps happening over and over. The same arm gets lost and the same arm grows back. Keep watching the arm. Look close now. Each time the arm grows back, it's not exactly the same. It looks a little more puny. It looks a little more twisted. It's not as healthy as the other arms.

Each time the arm is cut off and then grows back, it's not the same. Damage has been done. Recovery isn't as complete. Unlike Prometheus and is amazing grow again liver, it doesn't come back exactly the way it used to be (although Prometheus probably said more than "ouch").

Sometimes I think life's that way. Sometimes I think people are that way. Sometimes I think I'm that way. Something comes along and hurts us. We grow back. We keep going. We get hurt again. We grow back again. It happens and happens and we grow back, but not exactly the same. Something isn't as healthy. Something seems twisted inside of us.

Prometheus was punished for stealing the secret of fire from Zeus and giving it to people because he thought it was the right thing to do. Zeus took it personally and chained Prometheus to a rock. Everyday at the same time, like clockwork or the evening bus, an eagle came along and ate out his liver. Guess that's what happens when you try to do what you feel is right and someone disagrees.

The starfish got hurt for probably no reason. Prometheus got hurt for a reason, but probably not a good one. Depends on whether or not you think it was a good idea for Prometheus to take the side of people against Zeus and the gods, so people would have the power of fire. Do we get hurt for a reason or do we just get hurt?

A starfish is a starfish. Probably doesn't really know or care about the arm one way or another. Prometheus is a different matter. Immortal and thus feels pain and agony forever as the eagle eats a part of his body every day. Fortunately, Hercules (or Heracles, take your pick) eventually comes along, kills the eagle and frees Prometheus. But what happened to him? What happens to us? What happens to me?

We get hurt. We get scared. We grow back. Damage is done. Prometheus is immortal. Once freed, he gets his liver back and gets to keep it. Physically, he's OK. But what scars does his feelings and soul hang on to because of all those years of torture? Does he carry them forever as an immortal? Does he ever completely heal?

We're mortal. How long do our scars last? Is our "arm" deformed forever, or is their hope that someday we can be healed, too? Remy Zero once sang Save me. Who is there to sing "heal me" for the wounded?