House of Eratosthenes

I drove through about two thousand miles, give or take, with a total of about maybe…I dunno…ten, twenty minutes of audio entertainment Friday morning when it got nightmarishly boring. The rest of the time I just did some thinking. One of my deeper thoughts turned to superheroes in general. You see some of them functioning as individuals, like Batman and Spider Man, and others work within a group like the Power Rangers, Fantastic Four and the Justice League.

Some of these characters are transitional. That is to say, they have their adventures as individuals and then you see them as part of a group, and then they have their own stories as individuals again. With a lot of the big names, it’s a very casual transition. Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Aquaman are just kind of…in there, and then out there. Doing the hokey-pokey, in, out, in, shake it all about. There are others like The Huntress who are unceremoniously drummed out and then allowed back in, each transition part of a story with high philosophical meaning about the ramifications involved with working in a group. Those ramifications typically involve living up to a higher standard, and that, in turn, typically involves treating the bad guys in a humane way that doesn’t conclude with some desperate need for immediate medical attention.

Sometimes, a story arc will involve a member of a group leaving and then rejoining in time for a climactic battle scene, during which time it will become evident that he realizes much greater success when he is part of the group. This part of it, like a lot of other fiction, I have found to be the exact opposite of real life. Which is odd, because a fictional construct of the most realistic sequence — the hero works on his own, finds a way to change the world for the better, joins a group, finds he isn’t contributing much, goes out on his own and returns to his previous cycle of changing the world for the better — is not to be found in too many places…not within my knowledge, anyway. It’s a big comic book world, I’m sure everything’s been done at least once somewhere.

But if it has, it just doesn’t seem to take.

I wonder why? Sure we all like to have the little kids understand the benefits of working together and sharing their toys and activities with each other. But we want them to earn some money someday, don’t we? Wouldn’t it be useful to warn them about creativity-killing bureaucracies? There is The Huntress, of course; but it always seemed, to me, that the message being delivered had something to do with her being a better person when she was part of the Justice League, nevermind if she enjoyed a higher functional purpose, or if she even looked right in that role.

In fact, let’s go through all the mathematical possibilities. Work by yourself, join a group. Work as part of a group, quit the group and work by yourself. Work in a group, quit the group, have an epiphany and re-join the group. Work by yourself, join the group, decide this is for the birds, quit and work by yourself again. Cross-tabulated with…realize some successes working in the group, encounter persistent failure working by yourself, or realize some successes on your own and find yourself about as useful as a bag without a bottom when you’re in the group. How many different rows and columns are we talking about here? I do not know, and that’s out of scope…if I were to spare the few minutes getting it into a list, it would look very silly anyway and it would only serve to distract.

But your Origami-Unicorn-hey-I’m-a-replicant moment…the moment in which you realize your dreams and memories have been implanted…is this: We expect a certain moral to the parable. If you’re part of the Justice League and you realize a mix of successes and failures there, and quit to go out on your own, we have been conditioned to expect you to fail. You are ultimately supposed to learn that your proper place is within a group. If your efforts as a lone wolf are consistently successful, you’re supposed to conclude that it just doesn’t feel right, isn’t worth it, and you’re supposed to re-join the group — if you encounter failure on your own, you are supposed to come to an understanding that this is because the group is missing, and go re-join them.

Of course, if you don’t do that, and you say “Well, I may be failing as a lone individual right now, but success is just around the corner” then that would be nuts. That would almost be enough, all by itself, to make you a villain.

But if you realize persistent success in your efforts fighting as a lone superhero, and join a group, and then you find you’re chock full of fail in that configuration…then, you are expected to just keep at it, keep trying, eventually you’ll learn how to fit in and All Will Be Right With The World.

Some figures, of course, work well by themselves from the very moment in which they were created. But these are flawed, byronic heroes like the above-mentioned Batman and Spider Man. They are incomplete people, “dark” heroes whom kids can think are cool, if they want to, but the kids shouldn’t actually aspire to be like them.

As I said, this is a medium for little kids so some of this is to be expected. Parents tend to like their little darlings to be taught how to play nice with the other little darlings. But then, that’s what makes this so important. The adults should be paying more attention when their preciouses are ritually taught that engaging in efforts by yourself, is undesirable, doomed to failure, or ought to be dooomed to failure; and that self-worth is something to be found only when one functions as part of a group.

Action Comics #1 This, I believe, is not a positive development. Frankly, I don’t see the need. Yes there are some kids who’ve developed the kind of personality where they become excellent team players, and are unhappy or unfulfilled attending to their challenges by themselves. Do they require the entire comic book industry to pander to this aptitude profile, in order to feel good about themselves? Is such pandering, at an early age, even necessary? Does this even have to be defined at an early age? There’s nothing wrong with acquiring and realizing your most beneficial strengths as part of a group. Our country’s defense is based on this very thing. But if that’s where your calling is, it seems to me your drill instructor can beat the attitude into you at age seventeen or eighteen, just fine; success is not guaranteed there by any means, but it won’t have a lot to do with what comic books you were reading.

Hey, the feminists get to throw their fits whenever Wonder Woman’s legs aren’t covered up (although, at 70 she has yet to gain traction, momentum or currency — in or out of a group — without bare legs). All kinds and sorts of ethnic minority groups get to complain when they are not duly represented by some lame late-arrival to Super Friends like Apache Chief or Samurai or El Dorado. At least, I hope they complain, because I’d hate to think the writers just came up with these characters on their own…that would be really patronizing.

And don’t forget the physics. Everyone loves to complain about physics. Can Daredevil really do all that stuff just because he’s blind? How exactly does The Flash vibrate his molecules through a wall?

Anyway, everybody complains about everything in comic books — everybody’s got a pet peeve. Seems I should get mine, and that’s it right there. What’s wrong with celebrating the potential of the individual in our comic books, or even the triumph of the individual over the dysfunctional bureaucracy. Isn’t that how they got their start? Superman, the individual, wrecking the car with the group of bank robbers still inside it? Wasn’t that supposed to define the industry right there? What happened?

True. Teamwork is great and often necessary, (sometimes things are just too heavy for one person to lift, for instance) but it is just as often true that when you want a job done right, comittee isn’t the way to do it.

There IS a plot element where somebody falls away from the group, and comes back at the end when he figures out that his leaving was selfish, counter to his principles, or both. Those are ok.

But if they came back because they sucked on their own and they’ve decided that the only way they’re worth anything is as part of a team, well … no.
- philmon | 08/01/2011 @ 09:09
Probably I should’ve worked this in somewhere, but if one accepts (as I do) that “right-wing” is inherently receptive to individual efforts and the “left-wing” is inherently hostile to individual efforts, and also that the left is inherently receptive to committee thinking — then what I think we’re seeing here is simply a manifestation of Robert Conquest’s Second Rule.
- mkfreeberg | 08/01/2011 @ 09:34
Speaking as a guy who can read political stuff into just about anything…. I think this might be one of the few cases where politics has little to do with it. Yeah, I’m sure comic book writers (like creative people in general, sadly) lean left, but that’s correlation, not causation. I’d bet that the much more likely case is that you’re looking at an extremely long tail product — Superman has been around for most of a century — where just finding something for the characters to do must trump nearly any other consideration. If you run out of enemies for the Justice League to battle, you can always write some story of intergroup conflict to keep the series going (Aquaman decides to leave, other group members intervene, still other group members point out that Aquaman is completely frickin’ useless, Aquaman goes through an existential crisis, etc….. there’s a summer’s worth of issues right there). With a solo character, you either have to find a new scheme to foil each month, or do a lot of issues where Batman just does his laundry…..
- Severian | 08/01/2011 @ 13:09
, or do a lot of issues where Batman just does his laundry…..

ROTFL
- philmon | 08/01/2011 @ 13:36
You stopped your contemplation a little too soon.

The LATEST big thing is the “Superhero Registration” trope. It showed up in DC. It showed up in Marvel (twice.) It’s implied in “The Incredibles.” It’s even an open feature in Champions Online and City of Heroes, two superhero online MMORPGs. It doesn’t even tolerate questioning anymore…. it’s a part of unspoken dogma that “good” superheros are registered and licensed with the government.
- rhjunior | 08/03/2011 @ 21:50
Which opens the door for a new sub-genre of superheroes — Superheroes who fight Evil without government permission.

Sam Lowry in tights with a mask.

And a superpower.
- philmon | 08/04/2011 @ 18:19

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Monday, August 1st, 2011