On two distinct AmericanStudies
contrasts between our two most enduring superheroes.
A great deal of
ink—actual and electronic—has already been spilled about the identities, not only
individual but also as a matched pair, of Superman and Batman, Clark Kent and
Bruce Wayne, the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight. Heck, there have even been multiple
special comic book series dedicated to the pair’s crime-fighting
adventures. Having been created at almost exactly the same time—Superman
debuted in 1938 and Batman
in 1939—and having evolved, through comics and TV shows and films and
reboots, in eerily parallel ways, the two caped crusaders stand as the yin and
yang at the top of the superhero pyramid (us Spiderman fans might protest, but,
well, we’d be wrong). How much more can an AmericanStudier say about these two?
For one thing, I
think more could be made of the immigrant vs. insider dynamic at play in the
two characters’ backstories—and, more exactly, how each seemingly flips that
backstory on its head in his present, mythic status. Superman, the
immigrant from a foreign land (well, planet) who has to change his name in
order to assimilate to his adopted family and the United States, ends up
becoming the classic all-American symbol and success story, beloved of his
countrymen. Batman, the son of privileged and powerful parents, born on third
base holding a silver spoon, ends up rejecting much of that identity in favor
of the
shadows and dark corners, feared far more than he’s admired by his fellow
Gothamites. Damned if I know what to make of those shifts exactly, but at the
very least they reflect, individually and even more as a tandem, that
superheroic myth-making is just as partially related to original identities and
communities as is the
self-made man narrative.
For another
thing, I’d say that the two characters illustrate two very different models of
American heroism, images that contradict each other yet have often seemed to
coexist in particular moments and stories. In our narratives of the Union’s
victory in the Civil War, for example, we tend to give similar credit to Abraham
Lincoln, the larger-than-life superman giving the era its moral gravitas;
and to Ulysses
S. Grant, the down-and-dirty fighter willing to use whatever tactics seemed
necessary to get the job done. The two are difficult to reconcile—at the same
moment that Lincoln was delivering his unifying Second Inaugural,
envisioning reunion between the regions, Grant was pursuing the final stages of
his “total
war” strategy, devastating the Confederacy on every front. Yet it’s also possible
to see them as necessarily complementary—perhaps Superman’s idealism needs Batman’s
realism to get the job done; and yet without the idealism the realism would
perhaps seem too dirty or debased. The yin and yang of our superheroic myths.
Next hero
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Thoughts on these characters? Other comics you’d highlight?
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