CSotD: Called for clipping
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Johanna Draper Carlson's "Comics Worth Reading" currently features a link to a devastatingly insightful review by Chris Sims of the new collection, "Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years," which sent me back to (A) a conversation I had recently and (B) yesterday's criticism of modern self-absorption.
Start with this bit of child-development psychological whatchamacallit:
Certain dirty jokes remain immortal, a kind of folk tale repeated by children within a particular age group. The first really foul joke I remember was told to me by a 10-year-old when I was eight, and concerned a young boy named Johnny Fuckerfaster. It continued to amuse me until I was near my own tenth birthday and was old enough to reflect upon the improbability of the name, by which time I had passed this gem of pre-pre-adolescent wit on to a number of seven- and eight-year-olds who found it greatly amusing and no doubt kept the joke in circulation.
At roughly the same point in my life — the later one, the 10-year-old point — I began to read Superman comics, but it so happened that I fell into a peculiar and unique demographic, because, when I was 12 and had begun to reflect upon the logical flaws in this story … but let's stop to talk about one of those flaws:
If Superman is invulnerable, then his hair and fingernails would be invulnerable and by the time young Clark moved to Metropolis, they would have grown to disastrously absurd lengths.
It didn't particularly bother me, any more than I questioned whether you could actually walk into a closet and out the back into a mystic realm of talking animals and magical creatures, or through a mirror into a land where chess pieces were alive or, for that matter, whether a rather unpleasantly blunt governess could summon up astonishing adventures or fly by clinging to an umbrella.
Other children, however, were apparently more puzzled by the problem and wrote to DC Comics for an explanation.
Which they got. It had something to do with Superman flying to another solar system where he could still fly but wasn't invulnerable, whereupon he would groom himself and then return to Earth.
This absurd explanation was printed in the letters to the editor, whereupon my 12-year-old self read it and said, "Well, that's pretty stupid" because it simply turns one illogical premise into another, starting with, "Wouldn't he suffocate as he entered that solar system where he's not invulnerable?"
Now, in looking for a relevant image on line, I find that they have retconned it to a different but not all that less ridiculous explanation. And that Sheldon has commented rather well on it.
In any case, a few years after I had dismissed Superman as kids' stuff, I was getting a comics magazine from England called "Eagle," which, among its offerings, had a series called "Mann of Battle," in which the heroic British title character was rescuing an American general in WWII Burma or some such occupied jungle.
And this time I did write a letter to the editor, questioning how such an inept and not overly-brave schlemiel could possibly have attained the rank of general in the first place and by-the-by reminding him of who saved whose bacon in that late encounter.
To which he responded:
It was a brilliant response that somewhat affectionately put me in my place, and I read it very much in that spirit: If you're bright enough to ask the question, you should certainly be bright enough to get the point of an honest response.
So let's go back now to the summer of 1962, when I was 12 years old and beginning to question the internal logic of Superman.
There came along, with absolutely inspired timing, a new set of comics, of which the foremost was "The Amazing Spiderman," who, in his non-heroic guise was, unlike prissy-perfect Clark Kent, kind of a screw-up. Actually, in that first episode, there was no "kind of" to it. In his first appearance, Peter Parker was a total screw-up.
And as his story developed, he not only remained kind of a screw-up as Peter Parker, but even Spiderman couldn't get a break. He could save the entire planet from destruction, and there would be people calling him a monster and demanding his arrest.
Then, when I was well into high school, Marvel published one of those "letters from a smart kid" asking something or other about how Submariner was able to dive to such depths and yet … well, I forget exactly what, but they published it and their answer was a non-committal "We don't know either" sort of non-answer. So I wrote in with an explanation so completely and intentionally ludicrous that they published it.
In your face, Smart Kid!
And, shortly thereafter, I outgrew Marvel comics and moved on to Fritz and the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and similar delights.
All of which is to say, look, maybe continually coming up with answers is the wrong approach.
Certainly, if you have a good answer, one that makes sense and doesn't require you to throw either your creation or your intelligence under the bus, make it. Alfred Wallace had an excellent answer for me, which didn't require him to back up an inch but didn't involve insulting my intelligence either.
But it's a bit like when your kid begins to ask about Santa Claus: If he asks how Santa gets the presents into the house when you don't have a chimney, the answer is "I don't know. What do you think?"
And if he finally straight out asks "Is there a Santa Claus?" then he's probably just looking for confirmation of what he has begun to figure out. You gotta deal that card from the top of the deck.
So where does this leave our pal Clark Kent?
It leaves him hung out to dry in a world where not being able to cut your hair is a problem for imaginary superheroes but not being able to freaking grow the hell up is apparently a real problem for readers.
Clark/Kal-el/Superman finds himself re-defined and re-imagined and updated and transmogrified into something that is intended to make sense to adults, and I guess to the extent the franchise remains profitable, the process has succeeded.
Meanwhile, over at Marvel, they may not come up with explanations for every logical gap, but their heroes — well, their protagonists — have gone from slightly insecure to full-blown psychotic, operating on a level of dysfunction that would make each and every one of Sybil's personalities shudder.
Which leaves me with a question that I wish they would answer: What are the nine-year-olds supposed to be reading now? What's left for them?
I can't help but wish that, instead of imagining a universe where invulnerable superheroes could fly to distant suns for a haircut and a mani-pedi or reflect heat vision off their wrecked space ships to do the job, someone had imagined a universe where, as they age and become more sophisticated, readers simply move on to different titles, from simple heroes to more complex ones, and then to even more daringly imagined ones and then to true graphic novels.
The way it is done in every other medium: TV, movies, music, novels …
Look, I'm sure there is some elaborate way to explain Santa as a shapeshifting interdimensional time lord, but why? Why screw up a simple, delightful kids' story?
There's still plenty of Christmas left for the rest of us.
(Sure, pal. If you say so)
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