So I got another Jeff Parker digest — Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four Volume 2. The first three stories are fairly pedestrian: the FF battles dinosaurs in the first, then they fight something else in the second, and then they battle Namor the Sub-Mariner in the third. It’s standard-issue super-adventure, told professionally but without any particular spark.

The fourth one is the charm, though. Titled “It’s Slobberin Time”, it features a super-villain called the Street, who is, like the name says, a sentient piece of pavement, with a fire-hydrant stuck in him and everything. How did the Street come to be? Well, he tries to explain, but the FF is so busy bickering they can’t hear him…then the Thing goes off to get a specialty sandwich…Reed zaps the Street with some doohickey which makes him fall apart…and the subsonics summon Lockjaw, the giant dimension-traveling dog with the weird thingee on his head. Lockjaw is intensely and ominously interested in the Street’s fire-hydrant (“put that leg down!” wails the hapless supervillain.) But then the Thing comes back with his sandwich, Lockjaw eats it, which screws up his digestion, and then he starts burping himself across time and space, taking the FF with him.

My son loved, loved, loved this issue…or, as the boy himself put it, “I laughed so hard I farted!” I laughed out loud at several points myself, and even the rather indifferent artist seemed inspired; Lockjaw’s look as he tries to digest the sandwich is, for example, adorably hang-dog. Awwww.

In other words, “It’s Slobberin’ Time” isn’t so much an adventure with funny parts as it is a joke with loopy bits of adventure stuck on to create some sort of narrative. It’s not a tale of super-heroics, but a parody of super-heroics.

In thinking about super-hero stories, parodies are often seen as a kind of peripheral sub-genre — super-hero stories, qua super-hero stories are adventure pulp; parodies may be liked or disliked, but they aren’t really what the genre is about, either for its supporters or detractors.

But I’ve got to say that, at least for me, much of my sincere and long-term love of super-heroes is linked precisely to the way the genre is not only made for, but actually made of, parodies. All genres include parody of course, but for super-heroes, parodies are really central in a way that they’re not in…for instance, romance, or detective fiction. The earliest worthwhile super-hero comics were probably Jack Cole’s Plastic Man and C.C. Beck’s Shazam, and ever since then, super-heroes have consistently been at their best when going for laughs. The Mad Magazine parodies like “Superduperman,” Ambush Bug, Flaming Carrot, the Adam West Batman…even, say Super-Grover from Sesame Street. As far as public profile, and even, I think as far as aesthetic success, super-heroes are as likely to be parodic and silly as they are to be serious. Frank Miller’s Dark Knight drew a lot of its charm from its constant teetering on the verge of self-parody; Grant Morrison’s Animal Man was often indistinguishable from parody; even the dark, grim, Watchmen brought up classic super-hero parody tropes with some verve (how do you pee in that costume? and, of course, there’s the Silk Spectre Tijuana Bible….) On the alt comics side, it seems like everybody near about works with super-hero parodies Crumb, Ted Rall, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes (at least sort of), Jeff Brown, Johnny Ryan, Jaime Hernandez (I believe…I could be misremembering that one….). And, indeed, despite the ascendance of largely straight-faced movies like “Dark Knight,” parody remains extremely popular as a super-hero mode, whether within comicdom (Marvel Zombies) or outside it (Captain Underpants) (both of which, incidentally, are pretty bad…but that’s the way it goes, sometimes….)

In a lot of ways, I think, super-heroes are most adult (and somewhat contradictorily, most accessible to a varied audience) not when they’re violent or sexy or nostalgic, but when they’re funny and parodic. All those goofy powers and nutty costumes and bellowing about truth and justice while beating each other over the head… super-heroes are just funny. Which isn’t quite the same thing as saying that they’re stupid. Sure, lots of super-hero comics are witheringly and unforgiveably dumb, but the genre itself has virtually from the beginning also had practitioners who embraced and celebrated its own goofiness. The whole Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex thing…that’s not making fun of the super-hero genre; it’s an exercise occuring well within the boundaries of the super-hero genre itself.

I guess the point here for me is twofold; first, the super-hero genre really is smarter and more worthwhile than it’s often given credit for being; and, two, mainstream super-hero comics don’t take advantage of that as much as I wish they did. Maybe we are moving past the low water mark, though. I’m sort of hoping for the day when the Marvel Adventures line is the — parodic, smart — flagship for the company, and the continuity cluster-fucks are the undermarketed backwater. Dare to dream.

I keep meaning to link to this: if you have any interest in classic illustration, you should check out SurLaLune’s amazing fairy tale illustration archive. It is to die for.

Also, Tucker Stone has nothing better to do than parody obscure comics bloggers. I feel I have achieved true fame.

So one of the comics my son is currently into is the digest-sized compilation of Franklin Richards stories; titled Lab Brat The stories focus on Franklin, son of Reed and Sue Richards, as he causes trouble with his father’s inventions. Basically, it’s a Calvin and Hobbes rip-off; Franklin, with his big-head and light-hair, even looks rather like Calvin, and like Calvin he’s completely impossible and always causing trouble (usually, in Franklin’s case, by playing with his father’s dangerous inventions.) Herbie, Franklin’s Robot nannie, fills the part of Hobbes, the quasi-adult voice of reason who tries to keep Franklin out of trouble.

I tend to think that Calvin and Hobbes is somewhat overrated, so the desecration aspect of the endeavor doesn’t annoy me as much as it might — though, don’t get me wrong, this is significantly less enjoyable than even a mediocre Watterson strip. Writer Marc Sumerak’s stories are formulaic — Franklin gets in trouble with his dad’s inventions, Herbie tries to help him, hi-jinks ensue, problem is solved,wry closing joke is uttered. Within this fairly saccharine formula, though the gags are genuinely loopy — Franklin turning all of his classmates into fruits and vegetables is an especially bizarre highlight (and why exactly has Reed Richards created a device that turns people into vegetables anyway?) The riffs on old FF tropes are very entertaining as well — the gag where a six-inch tall Dr. Doom helps Franklin clean his room is pretty hysterical, as is the Thanksgiving cartoon where the FF is replaced by turkeys (you haven’t lived till you’ve seen the orange-brick turkey-Thing.)

The art is…well, it’s okay. Chris Eliopoulos works in a generic, animated cartoony vein — both the drawings and layouts are serviceable. Basically, it’s uninspired but professional — which, admittedly, puts it yards ahead of most mainstream super-hero fare. Eliopoulos is good at avoiding situations he can’t deal with; for instance, the transformation of Franklin’s friends into fruit happens off-screen — you see the friends, you see the fruit, but there isn’t any effort to show one morphing into the other. A more accomplished artist might have seen this sequence as a challenge…but there’s something to be said, too, for knowing your limitations.

There’s a back-up strip too; “The Masked Marvel”, which is drawn in a more typical mainstream style, though with hideous coloring that makes it look rotoscoped. Also, it’s unreadable; it was all I could do to skim it, and so I can report to you only in general that there are lots of pointless guest-shots (Wolverine gives a particularly pointless pep-talk) even more pointless industry in-joked (Bendis and other writers get mentioned.) Who wants to read this crap? Why do you think it’ll appeal to the same kids who want to read “Lab Brat?” Is anyone at all paying attention over there?

Ah, well. Anyway, my son loves “Lab Brat,” and even my wife (not a western comics fan) can stand to read it to him, so that’s a pretty good recommendation.

Tucker Stone has a column up on Comixology in which he argues that comics should get rid of the mature reader labels. He hopes this will allow for better stories:

Opening up the door of storytelling to allow for anything, be it violence and sex or just the simple rejection of any and all continuity, might even help the writers themselves—it’s this columnist’s firm opinion that the Punisher, a character who had seen a fleeting popularity in the 90’s that dwindled into nothing, has really only been well-utilized as any sort of interesting narrative character when Garth Ennis came along and rejected just about everything that had come before short of the concept, followed that up by taking his stories out of the regular Marvel universe, and then amped up the violence in his own twisted way. The argument isn’t that allowing writers to embrace their own personal understandings of “mature” storytelling would somehow make all comic books better—the argument is that there’s really no reason to put some forgotten stricture on the morality of the stories they’re telling. It just doesn’t apply anymore—it’s a fake predicament, erected against a concern that’s no longer valid. Meanwhile, the sales for these things are pathetic—and that’s after a summer where the most financially successful movies (from a global standpoint!) were about costumed super-heroes. If nothing else, it’s high time to change things up. When something is broken, and it’s limping its way around with nothing more then a straggling group of aging fans who can’t find anyone who wants to join them, the solution isn’t to just keep going in the same direction you’ve been going in at the same incremental pace. The solution isn’t necessarily that you make everything into The Boys and Lost Girls, either—but that’s a potential consequence of freedom that has a hell of a lot more craziness to it than the stagnancy of decelerating failure. That kind of freedom—to tell stories with these characters that allow for anything—is the same kind of freedom that produced comics like Doom Patrol and All-Star Superman, comics like Batman Year 100 and The Ultimates. It’s the freedom to take the character and do absolutely anything with it, because the character can’t break. Right now, comics have to come up with something and crazy is just about the only thing that’s left to try. Boring sure as hell isn’t working.

I agree with the general argument; mainstream comics are seriously screwed up, and they need to do something drastic if they’re ever going to be (A) broadly popular or (B) not incredibly crappy. And, certainly, at this stage, trying something — anything — seems better than the same old same old.

But I’m really not convinced this would be especially helpful. In the first place, as someone with a small child who adores Spider-Man, Batman, et. al, I feel like it would actually be nice to have a somewhat clearer system of labeling content. Some Batman comics really aren’t appropriate for five year olds; some are. A G or PG rating system would be helpful — especially for people who aren’t quite as tuned into comics as I am (God bless them.) And it’s true, as Tucker says, that kids aren’t necessarily going to be as attracted to the Vertigo line since the marquee characters aren’t there…but still and all, and despite the best efforts of the industry, comics qua comics remain quite attractive to kids, parents tend to see comics as kid friendly, and…yeah, from a pure marketing standpoint, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to tell people what kind of thing they’re purchasing.

As far as improving the quality — again, I don’t know. As Bill Randall points out, censorship doesn’t usually limit creativity in a straightforward manner; in fact it can be an opportunity for artists to innovate and get their point across in less direct, more creative ways. Certainly, mature content and continuity don’t need to be linked — the all-ages Jeff Parker books I’ve been on about are out of continuity — much to their benefit.

I do think Tucker’s article points in some interesting directions. For instance, he notes that “mature” comics tends to mean violence, not sex. I think he’s definitely on to something there; there really is a major marketing lacunae in mainstream comics where R-rated, sexual material should be. There are actual porn comics aplenty, and there are all sorts of alt-underground comics with explicit sexual content. But there isn’t really the sort of exploitation-cinema equivalent of mainstream action fare marketed around bare breasts and general salaciousness. (Sin City is something of an exception here…though I don’t remember even that ever quite hitting R territory. (Update: Matthew Brady in comments points out that there is some R-rated nudity in Sin City.)) Especially given the mostly male audience, the relative lack of sex in comics seems fairly bizarre, and is, I think, linked to fears about mature content. Certainly, it seems like if you wanted to reach out to a broader audience, one way to go would be to sex things up.

Basically, it comes down to the fact that the mainstream at the moment is devoted to telling mature stories with, for the most part, kids’ characters. The result is weird and distasteful and makes expansion beyond a very select group all but impossible. The stupidity and inconsistency around mature warning labels that Tucker points out is, I think, a symptom of this problem, but it’s not really the cause, and as such it’s hard to see how getting rid of them is going to solve anything.

Marc Singer has up a long and thoughtful post about Grant Morrison’s run on All Star Superman (brought to my attention by my brother…thanks Eric!)

Anyway, you should definitely read the whole thing, but for this discussion I’m going to quote the last bit here:

After viewing the world through Superman’s eyes, though, Luthor gets with the All Star program. He realizes “The fundamental forces are yoked by a single thought”–apparently the entire universe is “thought-controlled!” His enlightenment and defeat aren’t just the typical final-act reversals; they enact the triumph of the ideal over the material. Or, as Superman tells Luthor (while laying him out with a decidedly material, decidedly anticlimactic, decidedly satisfying punch) “Brain beats brawn every time!” In grand superhero tradition, Morrison stages a conflict of ideas and resolves it through the physical embodiments of his characters… which itself happens to be a perfect illustration of their ability to embody our ideals.

But tragically, perfectly, the story doesn’t end there. Superman converts to pure “solar radio-consciousness,” pure information, pure idea, yet he still manages to save us all one last time. He ends the series presiding serenely over Metropolis and Earth, maintaining the sun that keeps them alive, duplicating his earlier custodianship of Kandor on a much larger scale. And he ends it as a purely ideal being inspiring others to do better, duplicating his relationship to us poor souls down here on Earth-Q, where he’s never been anything else. Trust Morrison to end All Star Superman with one more radical variation of scale, one more blurring of fiction and reality–but trust him also to apply these familiar games to a new theme, one perfectly matched to his character, about the power of ideas; the power of inspiration; the power of hope.

I’ve read the first bits of Morrison’s story. I thought it was entertaining enough, and from what I read Marc’s contentions here seems reasonable…that is, yes, Morrison’s interests are about inspiration, about the power of fictions and of the ideal.

The thing that leaves me kind of cold, though, in both Morrison’s story and in Marc’s essay is…what ideals are we talking about? You can’t have an ideal without content. As just one example, Christian ideals (meekness, sacrifice, mercy) aren’t necessarily the same as American ideals (freedom, opportunity, self-assertion.) And neither are quite the same as, say, Jewish ideals. Or Viking ideals. Or Japanese ideals (and yes, none of these ideals are monolithic either, but you get the general point.) Marc says that Superman is “inspiring us to do better,” but do better at what? Commit fewer crimes? Lift bigger weights? Donate more to charity? What is ethically at stake here?

To cut to the chase; I don’t think there’s anything ethically at stake here. Nothing in Marc’s post, and nothing in the issues I read, suggested that Morrison was interested in, or willing to, raise the sorts of questions you have to raise if you actually want to try to place super-heroes in some sort of coherent moral framework. To just touch on some of the most obvious issues; the whole idea of the super-hero is kind of fascist (law-and-order perfect genetic vigilantes beating the stuffing out of overly intellectual criminal masterminds.) Relatedly, the whole framework of crime and justice in which super-hero comics operate deliberately skirts any kind of political or social engagement. Having other non-divine people constantly offer salvation is not especially theologically subtle. And so forth.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about ideals intelligently in a super-hero comic. Alan Moore did in Watchmen and Miracleman; I think Grant Morrison himself did in Animal Man. But you do need to be willing to talk about something concrete. Cold war politics and the bankruptcy of both right and left in Watchmen; animal rights and non-violence in Animal Man. Life without ideals is arguably monstrous, but ideals without life are nothing — just hot air.

The crux of the matter for me is when Marc says that Morrison is saying, “If Superman didn’t exist we would have to invent him.” No. No we wouldn’t. Superman’s a copyrighted, invented, commercial character, who happens to have been around for a while. He has cultural meaning and significance, but in himself — he’s not an ideal. He’s not Christ; he’s not the Buddha, he’s not God; there’s no systematic , profound, thoughtful tradition to explain what he is and what he stands for. You want him to be meaningful or stand for something, you’ve got to tell a story which makes him stand for something beyond…I don’t know, nostalgia, and niceness, and protecting people from crime and violent death. (I mean, crime and violent death are bad things, but “safety” as a spiritual sine qua non leaves something to be desired.)

Maybe Morrison really does the work I’m talking about in those last issues; maybe I’d be a lot more impressed with the end than with the beginning. But Marc strikes me as an eloquent apologist, and despite his enthusiasm and his intelligence, I really don’t see anything in his review that suggests that this series has anything to say beyond, “Superman inspires us because…um, well…because we’re comics geeks?”

I guess I’m waiting for the day when Superman gets taken all the way back to his roots and starts acting like a socialist again. Maybe now that we’re entering another Depression we could have him beating up mine bosses again, huh? You can tell that that’s authentic, 100%, real idealism, because it would actually have the potential to piss somebody off.

As I hope at least some of you have noticed, Bill Randall has kindly agreed to join us as a blogger here at the Hooded Utilitarian. Bill has been a fixture in the Comics Journal for a good while now; he’s written a column called “Lost in Translation”, reviewing untranslated manga. He’s a great writer and a smart critic of all sorts of media, and I’m thrilled to have him aboard. His first post (on censorship) is here