No Cape In My Size

Ordinary people, extraordinary lives. From SPIDER-MAN to Straczynski's RISING STARS, writers have tried to impose a sense of reality on the superhero genre. Alasdair Stuart looks at the appeal, and at some of the more successful attempts.
22 June 2001

Comics are littered with the right person in the wrong place. From Peter Parker attending that one fateful lecture in SPIDER-MAN to the 113 children conceived at the moment a meteorite explodes over their hometown in RISING STARS, the comic world is filled with normal men and women who find themselves given godlike power and are told to deal with it.

Why?

Because they're us, basically. The cynic says that the quickest and easiest way to get readers hooked on a character is to make them see themselves in that character. Peter Parker, for example, strikes a chord with every geeky kid who reads SPIDER-MAN. Similarly, the X-MEN movie was a massive hit with black audiences, the central theme of race hate and the similarities between Professor X and Martin Luther King and Magneto and Malcolm X clearly striking a chord.

At least in part, the use of the familiar in comics is also about setting. The 21st century is a relatively ordered, consistent time to live. People have houses, jobs, cars and never, ever fly through the air or kick their cars through walls. Place someone who can do those sorts of thing in a modern context, with modern sensibilities, and suddenly you have a far more interesting world than you would have otherwise had. If nothing else, think of the questions that need answering; Who are they? Where do they live? Where do they work? Do their families know they're doing this? Bang, instant story.

The other advantage this sort of thing has is the narrative opportunities it opens up. If your super-powered character is a citizen of the present, then you can place him in any kind of narrative you want. A good early example of this is ZENITH by Grant Morrison. One of Morrison's finest pieces of work, ZENITH is the story of a young, super-powered pop star who fights boredom more than villains. Zenith is arrogant, spoilt, brash and deeply unpleasant to be around, owing rather more to John Updike's Rabbit or Iain Banks' ESPEDAIR STREET than to Superman.

Of equal importance is the fact that Zenith is a child of his time - the mid-80s. He's a super-yuppie, self-obsessed and utterly unconcerned with almost anything else. Consequently, ZENITH becomes as much a story about mid-80's England as it is about a super-powered twenty-something.

Similarly, STORMWATCH (even pre-Warren Ellis) was trying to be the superhero book of the 1990s. The characters, all unwitting recipients of superpowers due to a comet irradiating Earth, were the world's policemen; a UN sponsored crisis intervention team that continually found itself in the firing line. Under Ellis this idea was taken to the nth degree, with America (traditionally the champion of such initiatives) becoming the team's most consistent adversary. The world's policemen found the rules they followed changing from day to day, just as national borders were doing at the time. Just as ZENITH was a story of the '80s, STORMWATCH was a comic of the '90s.

It's this versatility that is one of the biggest assets of the 'normal superhero' story. For the superhero or heroine to be believable they have to be an inhabitant of the time they're created, with all the influences that entails. When viewed this way, the constant revamps on Spider-Man make a little more sense. After all, Peter Parker, science whiz kid and boy photographer, is looking awfully dated these days.

So with a setting this attractive, how do the characters bear up? To continue to use SPIDER-MAN as an example, Peter Parker has become something of a poster child for the comic buyer, along with the comic store guy from THE SIMPSONS. He's the archetypal victim, oversized glasses, shorter than average and a big 'Kick Me' sign posted on his back. Which is unfortunate because here at least, the idea has moved on somewhat.

The characters of J. Michael Straczynski's RISING STARS are all physically diverse and were all in vitro when the 'flash' (a meteorite) exploded above their hometown of Pederson, Illinois. The interesting point here is that their powers all manifest along the lines their personalities were going anyway.

Patriot, a high school jock, becomes incredibly strong and agile while Poet, a more introverted child, gains tremendous insight - and tremendous power to boot. Some abilities are far from beneficial; Chandra is perceived as the most beautiful woman in the world, yet is never sure if she is, and Peter Dawson is granted invulnerability at the cost of touch.

It's not exactly subtle, but the point is clear: JMS is using the series as much as a morality play as an excuse to have people hit one another with tanks. The cast of RISING STARS are your high school reunion writ large, including the people you hoped to never see again. They're nasty, arrogant, petty, violent and thoroughly dysfunctional. And not a pair of oversized glasses in sight.

So there's realism to the genre now, and not before time. This also strips a little of the adolescent power fantasy away, with the archetypal superhero becoming more of a way of expressing the concerns of the present day in a fictional universe.

Which is not to say that it's all unrelentingly grim. Scott Lobdell's BALL AND CHAIN was a fine example of the genre being used for something that is basically just good fun. A couple's disintegrating relationship is salvaged by their accidental gaining of superpowers... which only work when they're around one another.

Where the previous examples all pushed the envelope a little, BALL AND CHAIN was pulp and proud of it. Lobdell's fast, wisecracking style fit perfectly with the subject matter, giving the whole thing a sheen normally reserved for the best American sitcoms - which perhaps explains why the series has been picked up for US TV. BALL AND CHAIN was sentimental, skirted dangerously close to smug, and contained very few surprises, yet still remained entertaining. BALL AND CHAIN knew its limitations and, if anything, gleefully played up to them.

Ultimately then, the archetypal superhero is not only attractive because of the nature of the character, but also because of what the character allows the writer and reader to do. To the writer, it's a God-given means of telling a commercially acceptable story; to the reader, it's a character from their time who, on some level, could be them.

They're far from perfect, and that's why they work.

Alasdair Stuart is the manager of Travelling Man comics in York, and writes for the Manx Independent newspaper.

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