Realism in Super-Hero Comics

Exactly What Is the Point?

By Corrina Lawson
March 23, 2009

So, I'm watching Tess of the D'Ubervilles with my husband, the English literature major. I walked into the room about halfway through the movie.

Me: This is by Thomas Hardy, right?
Him: Yes.
Me: So that baby dies, and she dies, and life sucks, right?
Him: Well, no. It's about how the class system can't be changed and how people are ground under by it and —
Me: Meaning life sucks and people with money and prestige will treat others without money badly, right?
Him: Well, yeah.

See, here's the thing about literary fiction. There's a large percentage of it that is about how meaningless the world is, how life can suck, and how people struggle against that but ultimately fail. It's to illustrate the human condition in the world and how we all struggle with darkness. Of course, most of us fail.

The thing with this type of fiction for me is that I already know that. That's the life around me. People die, it makes no sense. People get sick, it makes no sense. People behave badly toward each other, especially when money or prestige is involved.

Duh!

I don't want to wallow into what I already know. See Watchmen. Look! People act like jerks and madmen even if they have superpowers. And tragedy is what will bring the human race together, not victory. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

What I want is a magical story that convinces me that sometimes, the baby doesn't die. Or, if the baby does, it somehow triggers changes so more babies don't die. Or there's a hero and he doesn't give into despair and there's a chance for the world.

I see enough misery around. We all do these days. What I want is the hardest thing to find: a story where people can rise over their humble beginnings, where there's a hint that things will get better.

I want hope.

Hope is the hardest thing to sell but, damn, when someone gets it right, they move mountains. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sold hope, as did all those who fought for the rights of all people to be judged on the content of their character. None of them had solid evidence that their hopes would be realized. They lived and breathed on hope.

And it brought all of America to King's mountaintop, where a black man was judged on the content of his character, not the color of his skin.

But what are mainstream superhero comics selling right now?

Whatever it is, it ain't hope.

It's not heroism.

It's about an endless struggle where people die all the time and nothing ever gets better, so all is pointless.

Marvel is under a Dark Reign.

DC is currently tying much into a miniseries called "Final Crisis," which was billed as "the day evil wins."

Excuse me? When has evil lost lately? When have our heroes had a win, perhaps a bittersweet win, but a real win nonetheless? In "Infinite Crisis," the DC heroes won over a petulant, powerful child, but that was instantly negated by the escape of said petulant child to go smash up a number of universes.

Marvel heroes take out the Skrull invasion only to be ruled by mass murderer Norman Osborne.

Now, these books are selling. Some people like them. And I probably sound like cranky old Clint Eastwood talking about kids today. But what happened to the idea that superheroes were supposed to be all about hope, all about what's best in humanity, not about exploring what's worse? What happened to them being modern versions of our best selves, about the better angels of our nature?

Now, Grant Morrison ended DC's All-Star Superman on an interesting, though hopeful, note. I don't always agree with his interpretation of Superman, but at the end of this book, Morrison showed that he knows what the "hero" part of superhero means.

It's entirely possible that he means to wind up "Final Crisis" as some sort of statement against the darkness, about how hope can prevail, especially given Bruce Wayne's reaction to being used as Darkseid's pawn.

But given the track record of the majority of superhero comics lately, I'm just not too hopeful.

I think I'll go read Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier again.