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The Patron Saint of Superheroes

“Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics”

September 11, 2023 Analyzing Joe Shuster’s Action Comics #1 Cover

During the first day of my first-year writing seminar “Superhero Comics,” I project the cover of Action Comics #1 on screen and ask students to observe it closely, note details that interest them, and interpret those details. After writing for a few minutes, they exchange notebooks (or typically laptops) and add to someone else’s comments. After exchanging again, they read and underline what the previous two students wrote that interests them. Then each person reads aloud, while we everyone take notes on what topics arise. Then we talk. The goal is as much about establishing norms of analysis and discussion as analyzing Shuster specifically, but classes tend to make smart moves right from day one.

Here are some highlights from my current seminar:

1. The first person I called on noted the two sweat beads flying off the foregrounded figure’s face. I’ve taught this image many many times before, and no one (including me) ever noticed those before. Cartoonist Mort Walker dubbs the cartoon norm “plewds,” but what matters is that they communicate the character’s fear. He’s terrified of that guy smashing the car behind him. The original viewers of the 1938 image wouldn’t have known he’s Superman or even that he’s supposed to be a good guy. When we read around initial comments, the word “terrorist” came up once and “chaos” multiple times.

2. Sequing from the foregrounded face, the next student noted Superman’s facial expression, calling it “angry” and so not an emotion typically associated with heroism. I asked what specifically created that emotional impression, and we discussed the angle of the eyebrow line and the line of the closed lips, which I extracted and drew (badly) on the board. Everything is made of lines and every line can be analyzed and interpreted.

3. Another student wanted to talk about the explosion-like lines circling the car with red and yellow. Mort Walker dubs that “emanata,” a term I did have them write down, since, unlike plewds, emanata lines tend to appear a lot in superhero comics. We debated why Shuster drew them, agreeing that it gives Superman’s actions emphasis (if extended, the lines would converge on his upper body), and then I asked whether a character present in the scene would see the emanata (this could have been a moment to introduce “diegetic,” but I’ll refer back to the cover next time the distinction seems helpful). The student answered, “I don’t think?” Which is the perfect answer, because it conveys the weirdness of the effect. Someone else offered evidence: the background figure couldn’t literally be running into complete yellowness. I then went back and asked if the sweat beads were literal — do people experiencing fear project drops off sweat from the tops of their foreheads? Not so much. And that’s another example of the weirdness of comics art: it seems to be a drawing of something meant to be “real” (albeit fictional) and yet its details can be non-literal.

4. That unusually dressed man with a cape and in two of the three colors of the U.S. flag occupies the center of the page, establishing him as the literally central character.

5. Unless, someone else argued, you focus on the figure with the sweat beads again. Since he is closest to the viewer, we might as easily assume he is the main character. And that demonstrates two ways of visually privileging subjects: by centering them and by foregrounding them. You would need additional evidence to tie-break that visual disagreement.

We ran out of time, but this more than established the sort of analysis and interpretation they will tackle for each day’s homework. Next class we’re looking at the Superman episodes from Action Comics #1-9.

Before the cover analysis, I asked them to brainstorm traits and tropes they associate with superheroes and superhero stories. Then I stood at the board and wrote what they called out, underlining and circling and literally drawing connections as they explained. They anticipated so much of what I expect to discuss during the semester. It will be fun to show them their original comments on the last day of class:

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