Real Life Justice Leagues

RLSH

 
Wall Creeper, Shadow Hare, Dragonheart, Zetaman, the Crimson First—never heard of them? They’re self-proclaimed superheroes patrolling the streets of Denver, Cincinnati, Miami, Portland, and Atlanta. There are dozens more—Hero Man in L.A., Captain Prospect in D.C., Razorhawk in Minneapolis—with  entire Leagues of such would-be Avengers: Team Justice, Black Monday Society, Rain City Superhero Movement, Superheroes Anonymous. RealLifeSuperheroes.com insists its members “are not ‘kooks in costumes,’ as they may seem at first glance.” According to rlhs.org, they “seek to inform, and, most importantly, inspire” through “charity work and civic activities.”

Since these organizations, like non-costumed neighborhood watches, work within the law, they usually do no harm, and their “safety patrols” might even deter crime a bit. But they’re not superheroes. They’re self-designed cosplayers staging theatrics on city streets. They don’t actuate the superhero formula. Which is a very good thing. Otherwise they would be a league of Patrick Drums, AKA The Scorpion.
 

>Drum

 
Drum doesn’t dress up in a giant scorpion costume. When police arrested him in 2012, he was wearing a white tank top and khakis. Lexi Pandell recently detailed his adventures in The Atlantic. Like the Punisher or Dexter or the 1930s Spider, Drum is dedicated to killing bad guys. Oliver Queen on season one of Arrow crossed off names from a checklist of targets he murdered; Drum only ex-ed out the first two on his list of 60 registered sex offenders living in his Washington state county (about eighty miles outside the safety patrols of Seattle’s “real life superheroes” Buster Doe, No Name, and Phoenix Jones). While RLSH members “believe in due process” and “are certainly not vigilantes,” Drum told a courtroom, “This country was founded on vigilantism.”

The list of superheroes taking inspiration from animals is longer than Clallam County’s registered pedophiles. Bruce Wayne, like Drum, needed a defining emblem before starting his war on criminals. A bat didn’t fly through Drum’s window, so he looked back to a childhood memory instead. In a note he left beside his victims’ bodies, he explained how he’d once watched scorpions in a pet shop aquarium circling “in full battle ready posture” to protect a pregnant female. “This spirit always impressed me.” He left his emblem, a scorpion encased in a lollipop, with his signed notes. After his second murder, Drum planned to go off the grid and “live in the wild,” the site of his origin story. When he was ten, a stranger got him drunk and lured him into the woods for oral sex. Like Batman, Drum is after vengeance.

“My actions were not about me,” he wrote in superheroic grandeur. “They were about my community. I suffered many failures and my overall view of things was one of hopelessness. I took that hopelessness and in turn threw myself away to a purpose. I gave myself to something bigger than myself.” And, as in so many superhero sagas, the community championed him.  The county prosecutor abandoned the death penalty because she doubted she could convince a jury to execute him. Drum has too many supporters.

And what if those supporters organized a league of like-minded vigilantes? They wouldn’t look like comic book Avengers or any RLSH cosplayers. They’d look like the Klan. Detroit is currently patrolled by a RLSH cosplay team called the Michigan Protectors, but back in the ’30s, the city was under the watch of the Black Legion, a splinter group from the Ohio KKK. The Protectors’ Adam Besso, AKA Bee Sting, retired from superheroing in 2012 after pleading guilty to attempted assault with a weapon (his “stinger” was a shotgun). But that’s nothing to the 1936 conviction of nine Black Legion members for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Poole, an alleged wife-beater targeted by the vigilantes.
 

220px-Black_Legion_Uniforms_with_Skull-and-Crossbones_Insignia

 
According to historian Peter H. Amann, the Black Legion’s founder, William Shepard, supplied his superhero team with secret rites and costumes: “You have to have mystery in a fraternal thing to keep it up,” he said; “the folks eat it up.” Black Legionnaires sported black hoods, pirate hats, and robes with cross-and-bones on the chest—the same emblem Exciting Comics’ superhero Black Terror would use in comic books. Despite the Black Legion’s apparent passion for “crime fighting,” in “real life,” Amann writes, their actions “were neither glamorous nor likely to reduce crime.”The Detroit News made the same conclusion: “Hooey may look like romance and adventure in the moonlight, but it always looks like hooey when you bring it out in the daylight.”

So will the world never witness a League capable of championing real Justice? Maybe not, but the virtual world already has. Terre des Hommes, an international children’s rights charity group, has introduced “a new way of policing.” Like Drum, the organization wants to target pedophiles, but instead of hunting down and killing registered convicts, this Justice League exposes unconvicted ones roaming freely on the web. From their high tech batcave, a warehouse in Amsterdamn, members of Terre des Hommes (it means “Land of People”) don the team disguise of a computer-animated Filipino child named “Sweetie.” She’s supposedly ten (same age as Drum when he was assaulted), and when predators video message with her, they have no idea Terre des Hommes is locating their real world addresses. So far the superheroic Sweetie has netted some 200,000 Internet users. A thousand of them wanted to pay her to perform sexual acts.

Terres des Hommes has swept 71 countries so far. Drum couldn’t cover a single U.S. county. I doubt many RLSH cosplayers have considered assuming the alter ego of a powerless ten-year-old to battle crime, but Sweetie is probably the only real life superhero out there. I wish her Justice League continued success.

 

Sweetie

 

Romance and the Defensive Crouch

4As someone who writes and reads about comics, I’ve see a lot of criticism practiced from the stance of defensive crouch. So Pamela Regis’ Natural History of the Romance Novel was, depressingly, familiar.

Regis’ position is certainly understandable. Romance novels are even more loathed than comics. As Regis says, academic discussion of romance has traditionally presented the romance genre as corporate crap and romance readers as deluded fools. There are almost never mainstream reviews or discussion of romance, even though (as Regis says) the genre is more popular than ayn other; 55.9% of mass market paperbacks were romance novels in 1999.

Regis stated goal is to confront and refute the prejudice against romance novels. The book is meant to show that “the romance novel contains serious ideas” (contra literay critics) and that it is “not about woman’s bondage” (contra feminist critics) but “about women’s freedom.”

Regis uses two main arguments here. First, she says that the happy endings of romance novels do not erase or trap the heroine, because marriage and happy endings are freeing, not constricting. Second, she argues that the romance novel has a long-standing, stable form, and that current romance novels are the direct heirs of classic, canonical works by Austen, Trollope,and Forster.

The first of these arguments is unconvincing. Regis argues that heroines in romance novels overcomes barriers to union with the hero. “Heroines are not extinguished,” she enthuses, “they are freed. Readers are not bound by the form; they rejoice because they are in love with freedom.” But if the choice is always the same choice, how is that freedom? Of course the novels present passionate monogamy as joyful. But critics like Janice Radway and Tania Modleski point out, with some justice, that monogamy and marriage, in real life are not always joyful, and that marriage as an institution is often constricting for women. They question whether the constant insistence that joy comes only with heterosexual marriage is actually liberating, or whether, instead, it might be in some ways a limiting failure of imagination. In Pamela, for example, which Regis sees as the earliest romance, is it really a happy ending when the heroine ends up marrying a rich asshole who has spent much of the novel attempting to rape her? Regis says that romance readers can tell rape in fiction from rape in real life, which I’m sure is true — but if fiction doesn’t influence real life at all, what’s all this about romance novels being freeing?

Regis’ second argument — that books like Pamela and Pride and Prejudice are romances — is much stronger, and in many ways does the work for romance that she wants it to. If Pride and Prejudice and A Room With a View are romance novels, after all, then most people would agree that romance novels can be great literature. Indeed, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre are significantly more canonical than just about anything that mystery genre or sci-fi has to offer.

The problem is that Regis tries to prove the older works are romances by arguing that romance has a single structure, defined by eight narrative elements. Pam Rosenthal summarized these as follows:

definition of society (“always corrupt, that the romance novel will reform”); the meeting between the heroine and hero; their attraction; the barrier to that attraction; their declaration that they love each other; point of ritual death; recognition that fells the barrier; and betrothal.

The definition tself works as well as these things can be expected to (though I’ll talk a bit more about this later.) But once having established the rubric, it tends to put a straight-jacket on the rest of the discussion. Most of Regis’ book is given over to book summaries showing that the plots fit Regis’ categories. First classic works are discussed, and they fit — and then modern works are discussed, and they fit. But the fact that they fit doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re any good. Nor does Regis’ repeated assertions that Nora Roberts or Janet Dailey are masterful creators convince me that they are. On the contrary, Dailey’s books sound wretched, as do Jayne Anne Krentz’s. Perhaps they have some historical interest (Dailey was one of the first important authors to use American and Western settings) but Regis certainly doesn’t make the case for any merit beyond that.

In fact, the insistence on defining romance by eight narrative elements does the exact opposite of what Regis claims she wants to do. Rather than making romance seem serious, it makes it appear rote and formulaic. If the best you can say for someone like Dailey is that she knows the form and uses it, then why should anyone care about her? Even Austen and Forster and Bronte seem to wilt under the faint praise. They all filled in the blanks skillfully? Whoopee.

Regis’ difficulty is that she wants to defend all romance. She is fighting for the honor of romance as a genre, or as a whole. She never, once, in the entire book, admits that any single romance, anywhere, might be formulaic, or badly written. She acknowledges that the Sheik is racist only in order to dismiss it rather than (for example) to think about how the “dangerous man” fantasies in so many romance novels indebted to the Sheik might also be touched by class and racial stereotypes, or to talk about how white women’s liberation so often seems to be symbolically assured by association with non-white people.

I’m not saying all romances are evil crap. I don’t think all romances are evil crap. But many romances are crap, and it seems like you need to acknowledge that somewhere if you’re going to make the case that some romances are good. And one important way to start thinking about romances as various is, I think, to chuck the formula. Yes, many romances can be made to fit into Regis’ pattern. But then, many can’t. Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina and Gone With the Wind are books that are very often discussed as romance novels, and which don’t fit Regis’ pattern in important respects.Regis talks about Gone With the Wind specifically, saying that readers who identify it as a romance are “misreading”; that they’re substituting in a happy ending based on their familiarity with the genre. In other words, Regis suggests that romance readers are so wedded to their narratives that their basic reading comprehension suffers. This is supposed to be a defense of romance fans how, exactly?

Why not, instead, accept that lots of romance readers see Gone With the Wind as a romance — which means, maybe, that romance novels don’t have to conform to a single formula? Similarly, Trollope’s most famous romance, between Lily Dale and Johnny Eames, didn’t end in a relationship — which was (as Trollope astutely noted) precisely why it was so famous and successful. Villette almost, almost consummates its romance, only to end in tragedy. And, for that matter, A Room With a View, which Regis sees as a romance with a happy ending, has an afterword which (as Kailyn Kent has noted) refuses and refutes the formula. Is A Room With a View not a romance if you include the afterword? Or, possibly, is there more room in romance than Regis’ formula allows?

Though Regis is reluctant to admit it, romance novels have been commodified and rationalized since the days of Forster and Trollope; the standard endings are, I think, more insisted upon. And yet, you can see leeway still. In Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me, most of the characters get married off, but at least one, Liza, remains a serial dater, too restless to settle down, and happy enough in that restlessness. Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which is certainly devastatingly romantic, gets much of its power from its commitment to, and interruption of, the romance narrative as a narrative — by both giving and withholding the happy ending. I read Atonement like three times in a couple of weeks and cried every one. If that’s not a romance novel, I don’t know what is.

This isn’t to say that only books that refuse the romance ending to some degree can be great novels. But it is to say that the possibility of resistance seems to me central to the possibility of freedom, and even to the possibility of variety. Maybe, rather than saying that romance novels bind women, or that romance novels free women, it might be better to think of romance novels as fascinated by, or concerned with, the issues of autonomy and love. Some writers may handle those themes thoughtfully, others not so much. But all romance novels don’t speak with one voice, any more than all women do.

Utilitarian Review 12/28/13

On HU

Featured Archive Post: Tom Crippen with a gallery of Robert Binks’ Christmas cards.

Me on sadism and Jess Franco’s Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff.

Kailyn Kent and Osvaldo Oyola on the X-Men as assimilationist melodrama.

Bert Stabler on teaching cartoons and failing to teach cartoons.

Chris Gavaler on Jesus Christ vs. Superman.

Best albums of 2013.

Superheroes are about fascism but don’t necessarily promote fascism.

Who gains from a lack of diversity in sci-fi?
 
Utilitarians Everywhere

At Salon I write about:

why Love Actually is no good and you should read a romance novel instead.

22 great duets.

At Splice Today I write about:

arcade games and cyborg nostalgia.

pajama boy and anti-semitism

Also I participated in the 2013 Splice Today best music poll.
 
Other Links

Rachel Edidin on Scott Lobdell’s weak apology for sexually harassing Mari Naomi onstage during a comics panel. Brigid Alverson also has a good post about the issues involved.

Alyssa Rosenberg on the Duck Dynasty mess.

Osvaldo Oyola on Oglaf, the fantasy sex comic.

Amazon cracks down on monster porn.

Carolina D. on Her and disembodied femininity.

Let the Future Be Whitewashed…Today!

Everybody knows that racism is bad, but somehow hating diversity is cool. Thus, Felicity Savage over on the Amazing Stories site has a post where she chastises non-white people for wanting to see themselves in science fiction stories. She concludes by praising the work of Stephen Baxter, which she says provides the following insights.

Speculative fiction this good achieves something no other genre can do: it makes you realize, really realize, that we’re all in this together. Black, white, yellow, brown, male, female … to the Big Bad lurking on the dark side of the moon, we all look like snacks. That kind of perspective shift is what I read the genre for.

This is simultaneously honest and oblivious — the first predicated on the second. Because, of course, the reason that it is important to include diverse characters and diverse voices in speculative fiction would be because the assertion “we’re all in this together” is not, in fact, a pure, shining, unimpeachable truth, handed down by the gods of speculative fiction for our enlightenment. The statement “we’re all in this together” is, instead, an ideological presumption which is not supported by most of the extant facts. Kids in segregated schools on the south side of Chicago aren’t in this together with folks on the north side who have buttloads of tax money dumped into their science labs. Folks who were enslaved weren’t in it together with the people who pretended to own them with the collusion of the law. Women who lost their property rights during marriage weren’t in it together with the men who controlled them. And so forth. Proclaiming that justice and equality have been achieved because you’ve imagined some big old space monster is not profound. It. is. bullshit.

To say that human difference is not part of good sci-fi is to erase the thematic concerns of many of sci-fi’s greatest writers, from Philip K. Dick to Ursula Le Guin to Octavia Butler to Samuel Delany to Joanna Russ and on and on. It is, moreover, to admit to an almost ludicrous poverty of imagination. Sci-fi is dedicated to telling stories that haven’t been; to exploring the entire range of what might be. And yet, the only story you can think of, the only future you can see, is one in which white people’s experiences are the sole benchmark of importance, in which all people’s troubles and traumas are subsumed in white people’s traumas; in which, somehow, racial (and gender?) difference has ceased to matter,and in which that “ceasing to matter” means, not a blending of diverse races and experiences, but an erasure of all races and experiences which aren’t the dominant one right now, at this particular time.

“Nothing is gained by mapping our fragmented ethnic and sexual identities onto our fiction with the fidelity of a cellphone camera photo,” Savage says. To which one can only ask, who is it that gains nothing exactly? Ethnic and sexual identities are a big part of how we live; exploring them has been a huge resource for science fiction in the past. Admittedly, if you’re committed to a world in which you never have to think about others, and in which the one sci-fi story is a story about how your particular concerns, no matter how boring and blinkered, should erase everyone else in a lovely rush of imperialist amity, then, yes, diversity is an irritating distraction. If, on the other hand, you think that sci-fi should be as rich and complicated as the world we live in, then including difference is not a failure, but a necessity.

HT: N.K. Jemisin.
 

Dawn-2

Superheroes Are About Fascism

This first ran on Splice Today.
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Superheroes conflate goodness with hitting things. For the superhero genre, the best person in the world is the one with the greatest power; beating evil is a matter of hitting it harder. A world in which force and goodness are one and the same and both always triumph is a world in which you’re essentially worshipping force — and the worship of force is, as Richard Cooper pointed out last week in Salon, a good thumbnail description of fascism. No surprise, then, to find that early superhero tropes have roots in pro-KKK pulp novels and discourses around eugenics. A fantasy of eugenic superiority and righteous violence can give you Hitler or Superman, either one.

Chris Yogerst at the Atlantic objects to this  characterization of super-heroes on the grounds that superheroes are, in fact, righteous and use their power wisely. Or as he says, “The “fascism” metaphor breaks down pretty quickly when you think about it. Most superheroes defeat an evil power but do not retain any power for themselves. They ensure others’ freedom.” But, of course, if you were making fascist propaganda, the fascist heroes wouldn’t be portrayed as power-hungry whackos. They’d be portrayed as noble and trustworthy. Batman’s a good guy, so it’s okay that he has all-pervasive surveillance technology in the Nolan films, because we know he’ll use it for good ends. Tony Stark is awesome, so when, munitions manufacturer that he is, he makes a superweapon, we know it’s fine because he’ll use it well. And all those superheroes can act outside the law and beat people bloody without trial, or even torture them, because they are on the side of good, just like the KKK can operate outside the law in Birth of a Nation because they are on the side of good. (Yogerst also argues that superheroes can’t be fascist because they often mistrust the government — as if there’s no history of fascist vigilantism, in Germany or here.)

In fact, as Yogerst and Cooper both acknowledge, there’s a long history of superhero comics criticizing the superhero genre specifically because of the fascistic way it links the good and the powerful. Back in the 1940s, almost as soon as the superhero genre was created, William Marston and Harry Peter created Wonder Woman as an explicit repudiation of what they saw as a male glorification of violence.  Wonder Woman preached peace, and worked to convert her foes in lieu of (or sometimes in addition to) battering them senseless. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen presents superheroes as violent lawless bullies and megalomaniac monsters. The film Chronicle has a teen with superpowers who picks up on the rhetoric of eugenics, with disastrous results. Chris Ware (in Jimmie Corrigan) has a Superman/God figure who acts as a violent ogre/bully; Dan Clowes (in  The Death Ray) presents vigilante violence as a kind of adolescent fantasy leading to murderous psychopathy.

On the one hand, you could see the fact that this critique is so prevalent as evidence that it’s true; if so many creators over such a long period of time have seen the link between superheroes and fascism, and have questioned the equation of the powerful and the good, then that critique must have some merit. On the other hand, though, if so many superhero stories warn of the conflation of the powerful and the good, is it really fair to say that superhero comics always promote that particular fascist link? Superhero critique and parody is, and has just about always been, a central part of the superhero genre — so much so that Cooper’s essay can be seen not as an attack on the genre, but rather as an example of the genre itself. When he says, “Maybe one day we will get the hero we need: one who challenges rather than reinforces the status quo,” you could argue that superhero narratives have been doing that for a long time — and that his essay in fact uses superheroes to do just that.

Superhero narratives, then, are about fascism, and the glorification of violence as the good. But being about those things doesn’t necessarily always mean they endorse those things. Some, like the Nolan Batman films, seem to; others like Chronicle very much don’t; still others, like Iron Man, may go back and forth. Cooper and Yogerst correctly identify some of the key concerns of the superhero genre, but they both err in suggesting that those concerns have a single meaning. It would be more accurate to say that one thing superhero comics do is think about the relationship between the good and the powerful, sometimes equating them in a fascist way, sometimes criticizing the tendency to equate them, and sometimes examining that equation. The genre is one way we think about fascism — which is, no doubt, why it was so popular in World War II, and why it has had its recent, post-9/11 resurgence.

Best Albums of 2013

I participated in the Splice Today 2013 music poll, but I thought I’d put my top ten list up here as well. I reviewed most of them one place or another; links are provided. Feel free to put your own picks in comments!
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1.Valerie JunePushin’ Against a Stone

2. Cassie —RockaByeBaby

3. Edge of Attack —Edge of Attack

4. Guy Clark —My Favorite Picture of You

5.White+ — White+

6. Jeri Jeri — 800% Ndagga

7. Botanist — Mandragora

8. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell —Old Yellow Moon

9.Horse’s Ha — Waterdrawn

10. Tweet — Simply Tweet

Jesus Christ vs. Superman

Superman20Alex20Ross207

 
Who was the historical Jesus? Recent studies have razored the verifiable facts down to a skeleton so thin I made the mistake of suggesting at a dinner party that there’s not enough evidence to assume a real Jesus ever existed. Isn’t it just a question of faith?

This did not make me popular with the religion professor across the table. She cited the usual witnesses, Josephus, Tactus, Pliny, all nice guys but a bit flimsy on cross-examination. It’s tricky when you see just how many Christs (it’s not a name but a title, “the messiah”) were wandering Roman-occupied Israel during the first century. Add the even longer tradition of pagan godmen born of virgins who die for us and are reborn, and Jesus may be the most rebooted superhero in history.

But if Jesus wasn’t the first self-sacrificing demigod to save the world, he’s by far the most influential. It doesn’t take a biblical scholar to recognize other family resemblances: a Jew found by Egyptians, a Kryptonian by humans; a human reared by apes, fairies, or elves, a wizard by muggles, a king by backwater nobles, the son of God by Jews. The boy is always fated to grow up extraordinary: prophet, Man of Steel, jungle lord, Santa Claus, Voldemort-slayer, King of England, God. Movie directors also love to shoot their spandex godmen in crucifix-evoking poses, Superman especially (SmallvilleSuperman ReturnsMan of Steel), and a Last Temptation motif runs through the screen genre too (Superman IISpider-Man 2The Fantastic FourThe Dark Knight RisesThe Wolverine).

There’s enough written on the historical Jesus to crash a Kindle, but the New and Improved Testament of Superman would be simpler. Did a historical Clark Kent ever walk the Earth? Interpretations fall into three camps:

1) Literalists accept the claims of the canonical Media as absolute: Clark was an extraterrestrial with supernatural powers dedicated to humankind.

2) Historicists analyze both canonical and non-canonical Media in search of the so-called authentic Clark, a human being of purely naturalistic ability around whom followers later developed legendary tales.

3) Mythicists reject that any Clark, human or extraterrestrial, existed, arguing that early Superman worship was actually an adaptation of pre-existing practices common to the era.

Literalism dominates popular culture. A 2012 Rasmussen poll found that 86% of Americans believe Clark Kent walked among us, and 77% believe he was resurrected after his battle with Doomsday. While vaguely aware of the academic controversies surrounding the historical Clark, the average comic book reader would never question Superman’s extraterrestrial origins and powers. Literalists prefer the traditional assumption that Superman Media were created through infallible inspiration and that dissecting long-cherished productions is an offense to followers. But no belief system, no matter how deeply ingrained in a cultural psyche, is exempt from intellectual examination. Believers should be willing to combine the faith of their convictions with the rigor of impartial analysis.

Looking first at canonical Media, both Historicists and Mythicists make much of the fact that Superman Adventures contain a lot of internal contradictions. Was, for instance, the infant Clark ever placed in an orphanage? The Adventures According to Max show that he was, but Adventures According to George include no orphanage and depict only the Kent foster parents finding and raising the Superman child. Max never even mentions the Kents. Some Literalists explain the inconsistency by citing Jerome & Joe, arguably the oldest of the Media, when the Kents deliver the foundling to an orphanage and then return to adopt him. Reliance on Jerome & Joe, however, points out other contradictions. Superman’s adoptive mother—Martha in the other Media and in most Literalist ceremonies—is Mary here.

The Media is also inconsistent regarding superpowers. Although tradition maintains that Superman always had the ability to fly, Jerome & Joe list no such power, and Clark’s propensity to “hurdle skyscrapers” and “leap an eighth of a mile”—from the earliest version of the Superman creed still repeated by followers today—implies the opposite. The creed itself has undergone multiple changes, and even DC Entertainment, that bastion of superhero fundamentalism, acknowledges that the addition of “and the American way” to Superman’s pledge to fight for “truth and justice” is an interpolation into George, as demonstrated by the phrase’s absence in the otherwise identical Max edition (Max is assumed to be older because later media tend to expand rather than condense earlier sources).

A study of non-canonical Media, or Apocrypha, raises further issues. While The Lost Episodes of Psuedomax can be dismissed, more has been made of the largely forgotten Adventures According to Christopher. The assertion that George and Christopher are the same creator (based mostly on the misreading of “Reeve[s]” as a surname rather than a title) is rejected by most scholars, but the video still challenges many elements of the tradition. Literalists cite it as an independent source supporting the general narrative of the canonical Adventures, but the Christopher depiction of Krypton varies radically with George and lends support to the growing consensus that all accounts of Superman’s planet of origin are conjectural.

Despite annual re-enactments of the baby Superman’s escape from doomed Krypton in his father’s rocket and the tearful farewell of his self-sacrificing biological parents, there’s little support for the tale’s authenticity. Only George in the Superman Media dramatizes it. Jerome & Joe and Max mention only the fact of the planet’s destruction and the arrival of the rocket on earth. Not only may Superman’s biological parents be inventions, but even the name of the planet is suspect (Krypton, or “Crypt-on,” translates “on or from the unknown”).

The most famous Apocrypha are the much maligned Infancy Adventures. These psuedographics, many attributed to the heretical Super Friends cult, feature a pre-adolescent Clark, or “Superboy,” engaging in acts clearly derivative of the canonical Adventures. Literalist tradition maintains that Clark Kent’s powers manifested with puberty. The Infancy Apocrypha pose no direct threat to Literalism, or even Historicism, but Mythicists use the tales to highlight temporal gaps in the biography. Neither Literalists nor Historicists can say much about Clark until the age of thirty when he dons his ceremonial costume and his followers dub him Superman (a title, Literalist point out, Clark never claimed for himself). It’s hardly surprising no records remain of Clark before the age twelve, but the dearth of information after the initial development of his powers and before his dedication to humankind is odd. It doesn’t, however, lead to the Mythicist conclusion that no historical Clark ever existed.

Mythicists also point to elements in the Superman Media that pre-date the composition of the earliest Adventures and so, they argue, disprove a historical basis for Clark Kent. They trace the name “Superman” to an obscure, German prophet and say the Clark/Superman duality is prefigured by the cult of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Mythicists also spend a great deal of time analyzing pre-Superman superhero prototypes in attempt to show that all portrayals of battles between good and evil must be fictional. Many Mythicists view the Superman Media as allegories showing how to realize you “inner Superman” by destroying your “home planet”(the lowly physical world ) and dedicating yourself to “truth and liberty.” Krytonite represents material distractions that prevent initiates from maintaining their spiritual powers.

Although the Mythicist approach is easy to lampoon, a purely Literalist approach is equally problematic. Historicists may unjustifiably dismiss the extraterrestrial nature of Clark Kent, but their scholarship can peel away inauthentic elements from the historical Adventures to reveal the true Superman. Followers owe it to the memory of Clark Kent to bring Superman worship into the 21st century. How can we dismiss other religion’s superstitious beliefs—with their magic cosmic rays and radioactive spiders bites—without fully examining our own?

jesus sup