Superhero: Encyclopedia II - Superhero - History of superheroes in comic books

Superhero - History of superheroes in comic books

Superhero - Antecedents

The origins of superheroes can be found in several prior forms of fiction. Many share traits with protagonists of later Victorian literature, such as The Scarlet Pimpernel and Sherlock Holmes.

Penny dreadfuls, dime novels and other popular fiction of the early twentieth century featured mysterious, swashbuckling heroes with distinct costumes, secret identities and altruistic missions. These include Zorro, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh and Spring Heeled Jack, who first emerged as an urban legend.

Pulp magazine crime fighters, such as Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Spider, and comic strip characters, such as Dick Tracy and The Phantom, were probably the most direct influences.

By modern standards, characters like Doc Savage and The Phantom — normal human beings at or near peak abilities — could be considered superheroes in their own right, but the first appearance of Superman is widely considered the point at which the superhero genre truly began.

Philip Wylie's 1930 novel Gladiator has recently gained attention as a prototype not only of the "classic" superhero, but also of its deconstruction. [2]

Superhero - Golden Age

In 1938, writer Jerry Siegel and illustrator Joe Shuster, who had previously worked in pulp science fiction magazines, introduced Superman. The character possessed many of the traits that have come to define the superhero, including a secret identity, superhuman powers and a colorful costume including a symbol and cape. His name is also the source of the term "superhero."

DC Comics (which published under the names National and All-American at the time) received an overwhelming response to Superman and, in the months that followed, introduced such superheroes as Batman and his sidekick Robin, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkman, Aquaman and Green Arrow. The first team of superheroes was DC's Justice Society of America, featuring most of the aforementioned characters.

Although DC dominated the superhero market at this time, companies large and small created hundreds of superheroes. Marvel Comics’ Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, Quality Comics’ Plastic Man and Phantom Lady, and Will Eisner's The Spirit (featured in a newspaper insert) were also hits. The era's most popular superhero, however, was Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel, whose exploits regularly outsold those of Superman during the 1940s.

During World War II, superheroes grew in popularity, surviving paper rationing and the loss of many writers and illustrators to service in the armed forces. The need for simple tales of good triumphing over evil may explain the wartime popularity of superheroes. Publishers responded with stories in which superheroes battled the Axis Powers and the introduction of patriotically themed superheroes, most notably Marvel's Captain America.

After the war, superheroes lost popularity. This led to the rise of other genres, especially horror and crime. The lurid nature of these genres sparked a moral crusade in which comics were blamed for juvenile delinquency. The movement was spearheaded by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who argued, among other things, that "deviant" sexual undertones ran rampant in superhero comics. [3]

In response, the comic book industry adopted the stringent Comics Code. By the mid-1950s, only Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman retained a sliver of their prior popularity, through an effort towards complete inoffensiveness that some people considered silly, especially by modern standards. This ended what historians have called the Golden Age of comic books.

Superhero - Silver Age

In the 1950s, DC Comics, under the editorship of Julius Schwartz, recreated many popular 1940s heroes, launching an era later deemed the Silver Age of comic books. The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman and several others were revived with new origin stories. While past superheroes resembled mythological heroes in their origins and abilities, these heroes were inspired by contemporary science fiction. In 1960, DC banded its most popular heroes together in the Justice League of America, which became a sales phenomenon.

Empowered by the return of the superhero at DC, Marvel Comics editor/writer Stan Lee and the artists/co-writers Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko launched a new line of superhero comic books, beginning with The Fantastic Four in 1961. These comics continued DC’s emphasis on science fiction concepts (radiation was a common source of superpowers) but placed greater emphasis on personal conflict and character development. This led to many superheroes that differed greatly from their predecessors with more dramatic potential. Some examples:

• The Thing, a member of The Fantastic Four, was a super strong, but monstrous creature with rock-like skin, whose appearance filled him with self-pity.
• Spider-Man was a teenager who struggled to earn money and maintain his social life in addition to his costumed exploits.
• The Incredible Hulk shared a Jekyll/Hyde-like relationship with his alter ego and was driven by rage.
• The X-Men were "mutants" who gained their powers through genetic mutation and who were hated and feared by the society they sought to protect.

By the early 1970s, the return of the superhero genre, the rise of television as the top medium for light entertainment and the Comics Code Authority’s effect on grittier genres obliterated genres such as westerns, romance, horror, war and crime while the superhero genre underwent a revival. In the coming decades, non-superhero comic book series would occasionally rise to popularity but superheroes and comic books would be forever intertwined in the eyes of the American public.

Superhero - Deconstruction of the superhero

In the 1970s, DC Comics paired Green Arrow and Green Lantern together in a ground-breaking socially-conscious series. Writer Dennis O'Neil portrayed Green Arrow as an angry, street-smart populist and Green Lantern as good-natured but short-sighted authority figure. This is the first instance in which superheroes were classified into two distinct groups, the "classic" superhero and the more brazen anti-hero and the first to suggest that the former had become outdated.

In the 1970s, DC returned Batman to his roots as a dubious vigilante and Marvel introduced several popular anti-heroes, including The Punisher, Wolverine and writer/artist Frank Miller's darker version of Daredevil. These characters were deeply troubled from within. Batman, The Punisher and Daredevil were driven by the crime-related deaths of family members and were continually exposed to slum life. The X-Men’s Wolverine, on the other hand, was at odds with his own savage nature.

The trend was taken to a new extreme in the 1986 mini-series Watchmen by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, which was published by DC but took place outside the "DC Universe", with new characters. The superheroes of Watchmen were emotionally unsatisfied, psychologically withdrawn and even sociopathic.

Another story, The Dark Knight Returns (1985-1986) continued Batman’s renovation. This mini-series, written and illustrated by Frank Miller, featured a future Batman returning from retirement. The series portrayed the hero as a madman on a brutal quest to mold society to his will and concluded with a symbolic slugfest against Superman.

Some critics believe that this trend is tied to the cynicism of the 1980s, when the idea of a person selflessly using his extraordinary abilities on a quest for good was no longer believable, but a person with a deep psychological impulse to destroy criminals was. Regardless, both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns were acclaimed for their artistic ambitiousness and psychological depth and became watermark series, leading to numerous imitations.

Superhero - Struggles of the 1990s

By the early 1990s, anti-heroes had become the rule rather than the exception, as The Punisher, Wolverine and the grimmer Batman became very popular and marketable characters. Anti-heroes such as the X-Men’s Gambit and Bishop, X-Force's Cable and the Spider-Man adversary Venom became some of the most popular new characters of the early 1990s. This was financial boom time for the industry when a new character could become well-known quickly and, according to many fans, stylistic flair eclipsed character development.

In 1992, Marvel illustrators Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld — all of whom helped popularize anti-heroes in the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises — left Marvel to form Image Comics. Image changed the comic book industry as a haven for creator-owned characters and the first significant challenger to Marvel and DC in thirty years. Image superhero teams, such as Lee’s WildC.A.Ts and Gen 13, Leifeld’s Youngblood, were instant hits but were criticized as over-muscled, over-sexualized, excessively violent and lacking in unique personality. McFarlane’s occult hero Spawn fared somewhat better in critical respect and long-term sales.

To keep ahead of new competitors and continue to the financial boom, Marvel and DC launched headline-grabbing, large-scale storylines that made drastic changes to iconic characters. The "Death of Superman" found the hero killed and resurrected, Batman was physically crippled in the "KnightSaga" storyline, and a clone of Spider-Man vied with the original for the title. While these stories drummed up publicity, fans complained that the essential elements of the franchises had been diluted and they ultimately lost interest.

Throughout the 1990s, several creators deviated from the trends of violent anti-heroes and sensational, large-scale storylines. Painter Alex Ross, writer Kurt Busiek and Alan Moore himself tried to "reconstruct" the superhero genre. Acclaimed titles such as Busiek's and Ross' Astro City and Moore's Tom Strong combined artistic sophistication and idealism into a superheroic version of retro-futurism. Ross also painted two widely acclaimed mini-series, Marvels (written by Busiek) for Marvel Comics and Kingdom Come for DC, which examined the classic superhero in a more literary context. Kingdom Come also satirized the anti-heroes; Magog, one of the series' antagonists, was a parody of Cable.

By the beginning of the 2000s, most classic superheroes had returned to their roots. However, the comic book industry’s most acclaimed writers could make drastic changes and gain general fan approval, as was the case with Grant Morrison's New X-Men series and Brian Michael Bendis's "Avengers Disassembled" story arc.

As of 2005, a decline in the comic book industry has cut the surplus of anti-heroes, but a revival of superhero films and a rise in the sale of trade paperbacks have kept the superhero genre healthy.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History of superheroes in comic books", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki