Children Of The Atom

From the orphaning of Bruce Wayne to the surrogate family of Miracleman, parental relationships have always been unconventional in superhero fiction. Lindsay Duff looks at what these absent parents and authoritative fathers might represent.
08 July 2002

From their very inception in the Golden Age of the 1930s, it seems superheroes have always had parental issues. From the grim origins of Bruce Wayne's personal vendetta against crime, through the responsibilities imposed on the orphaned teenage Peter Parker, to the reluctant exchange of power between Ted and Jack Knight in STARMAN, superheroes have always had trouble in the parents department.

In this respect, the nascent genre of superhero comics had more in common with boys' adventure stories than other Golden Age action genres. Gangsters, G-men, pirates and swashbucklers are all character based firmly in the adult world. Parents were almost never involved in stories of these genres, either actively or as indirect motivation.

However, superhero comics held a special appeal for youngsters due to such script elements as the heavy involvement - or even purposeful absence - of parental figures. Whether these elements were a stroke of empathic scripting genius or merely a way of justifying a man running around in a bat outfit while beating up goons and foiling dastardly plans is something probably lost to posterity, unfortunately.

From a young readership's point of view, the single greatest motivation a writer can give a character is the desire to right wrongs committed against the family. As any kid can tell you, the most hurtful jibes are the ones that target one's nearest and dearest. So, Peter Parker losing his Uncle Ben and Bruce Wayne witnessing his parents' murder strike a resonant chord in the readers of those books.

Super-teens are different from their real-life counterparts not merely because of their great powers, but also because of their great responsibility. Whereas he great majority of the readership have parents or guardians who shoulder most - if not all - of the responsibility of quotidian life, the characters in superhero fiction not only often lack parental figures upon whom they can depend, but also frequently find themselves being responsible for the well-being of ordinary people.

At the same time, superheroes who have been given the back-story of murdered or missing parents have a kind of freedom from domestic pressure - they have no nagging parents to give them chores, which must seem heavenly to a typical moody teenager.

The many writers of superhero fiction down the years have used the parental relations of their characters in about every way imaginable. As well as the typical "vengeance for a loved one's murder" scenario, comics readers have also witnessed neglectful step-parents, children who don't know who their parents are, children who have been traumatised by the loss of their parents, children who have been inspired to wage twisted, self-serving crusades, and children who have been orphaned by mysterious cosmic forces. And that's just in the pages of the X-MEN.

Parents, and fathers in particular, are also often role models for an infant superhero. This can be because they have a thoroughly upstanding moral code that the youth admires, like Pa Kent, or because their own exploits as a superhero are a positive inspiration to their kin, like Ted Knight in STARMAN, or the various generations of the Flash dynasty. This is a widely employed authorial device, perhaps because it keeps real parents happy to see their children reading comics where the characters are seen to be respectful and obedient towards their parents, and visibly profiting from it.

However, not every superhero's relationship with their parents is such a shining example of dutiful kinship; indeed, some such relationships in some high-profile books are quite subversive.

For instance, Thor is constantly saving the day by going against the wishes of his father, or proving himself through his own actions. In itself, this isn't particularly seditious. When one's father is the Allfather, though, rebellion and disobedience are much more significant, particularly if (as in this case) the rebellious youth is always successful even though his father is displeased with him, or is actually confronting him.

This is perhaps the most subversive element of the whole 'superhero-as-child' motif; Because superheroes are almost always the successful protagonists, or at least seen to be in the right, any parental figures disagreeing with them are immediately cast as antagonists - definitely a good way to grab the attention of a rebellious adolescent reader.

A particularly interesting development in the evolution of superheroes and their parental relationships is the existentially challenging concept of the superhero as artificial being, as a product not so much of parents as of a creator. This generally introduces malevolent overtones into the relationship between creator and creation, as evidenced by the self-serving and megalomaniac motivations of Dr Gargunza in MIRACLEMAN or the misguided and Darwinian goals of Dr Peyne in ZENITH.

Indeed, Zenith has a particularly torrid time in meeting his fathers, both spiritual and biological, as Peyne wants to use him as breeding stock for a dynasty of super-powered individuals, and his natural father (himself once a superhero) has been made post mortem into a mindless and homicidal automaton. Not exactly a picture of domestic bliss.

A superhero protagonist's parents can be more than just characters or backstory, though - they can be a fundamental part of the story themselves. STARMAN touches upon this, with its extended motif of the fathers' battles being fought through their sons, but the best examples of parenthood being integral to the plot are to be found - perhaps inevitably - in the work of Alan Moore.

In WATCHMEN, revelations of parenthood make for one of the key moments of the book. The book's inter-spliced flashbacks and concurrent threads set a generation apart mean that actions can be immediately juxtaposed with their consequences five, ten or thirty years later. One such action that has deep repercussions is the Comedian's rape of the original Silk Spectre, leading to the birth of Laurie, the next generation's Silk Spectre.

Laurie's unwanted discovery of her father's identity - and the fact that he is a man she has always hated - is a shattering blow to the foundations of her life. For the objective and dispassionate Dr Manhattan, though, it is the miracle of coincidence that is represented by the confluence of circumstances leading to the creation of each and every human life - represented in this case by Laurie - that persuades him that human life is worth retaining.

In Moore's MIRACLEMAN, not only is Gargunza the surrogate 'father' of Miracleman, but also of the whole 'Miracle Family'. The psychotic Kid Miracleman, Johnny Bates, ostensibly the 'child' of this family, takes the concept of the rebellious super-youth to its furthest extent. His challenge to his father figure is brutal, utterly destructive and laden with all the resentment that comes from being forced to be the 'kid', the lesser shadow of the 'father', in perpetuity. Despite his physical prowess, he can never grow up.

Balancing this artificial father/child interaction is Mike Moran/Miracleman's natural fatherhood. His daughter is an equal to her super-powered father practically from the moment of her birth, but this never seems to lead to any feelings of contempt from either party. Compared to Kid Miracleman, Winter is a model of enlightenment and balance. Perhaps she is also a parent's ideal child - instantly mature, but remaining a seemingly fragile infant until such time as they choose to grow up. Not requiring the absolute support of a typical parent-child relationship, but in constant need of mental and emotional stimulation that only the parent can supply indefinitely.

Notable by its absence in the superhero genre is any sort of conventional parental relationship. Then again, the superhero genre is comics' very own version of the soap opera, and so thrives on unlikely and melodramatic familial situations. Unlike soap opera, superhero stories could never be described as 'slice of life', but in their convoluted and improbable parental relationships, they do hold a mirror up to the domestic lives of their target audience; young adolescents who have a particular affinity for tales of domestic strife. It seems that, for as long as 'issues' sell issues, superhero comics will never feature happy families.

Lindsay Duff is a literature graduate and researcher.

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