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October 10, 2011 When Superheroes Are Assholes

The first time I taught my honors seminar “Superheroes,” I scribbled character elements on the board as students called them out:

“Intelligent.”

“Superpowers.”

“Orphans.”

“Brave.”

No one shouted, “Assholes.”

But they are now.

Comicbook.com’s Scott Johnson isn’t the only reader to call Grant Morrison’s new Action Comics Superman a “cynical, arrogant jerk.” Johnson concedes that “this might be the real personality that would develop if an all-powerful alien being found himself stranded on earth. Those with great power, more often than not let it go to their heads.”

But Morrison isn’t the first writer to portray a superheaded hero. It’s been the trend for years if not decades.

We have yet to see what director Joss Whedon has in store for The Avengers, but Captain Hammer, his first take on a superhero, was a superasshole. Nathan Fillion hammed it up as the cheesy embodiment of superpowered privilege in Whedon’s 2008 musical Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The guy dupes a social advocate into sleeping with him (“This is so nice / Just might sleep with the same girl twice”) by faking that he cares about the homeless (“I’m poverty’s new sheriff / And I’m bashing in the slums / A hero doesn’t care / If you’re a bunch of scary alcoholic bums”).

Look at Jonathan Lethem’s Omega The Unknown and his superhero is no better. In addition to womanizing, the millionaire Mink bribes politicians, stages photo-ops, and stars in his own Hollywood Squares TV show. Other characters call him “greedy and boastful,” a “jerk,” a “pig,” and (my favorite) “the worst person I have ever been seated behind in a movie theater.”

Hammer and the Mink are right up there with CoreFire, Austin Grossman Superman knock-off in his 2007 novel Soon I Will be Invincible. CoreFire has a “smug air of invincibility” and seems to fly “purely out of a sense of entitlement.” His own teammate calls him a “jerk” and a “fucking racist.”

President Obama would never call someone a fucking anything (though, wow, do I wish he would), but he doesn’t like arrogant superheroes either. While on the campaign trail in 2008, he told Entertainment Weekly: “The guys who have too many powers—like Superman—that always made me think they weren’t really earning their superhero status. It’s a little too easy.”

Garth Ennis, on the other hand, would call anyone a fucking anything. His superhero-bashing Butcher in The Boys sums up what he hates most about them: “That arrogance. That fuckin’ DISDAIN they have for us, where our lives mean nothin’ more than a rat’s.” And if that’s not clear enough for you, Ennis has Homelander (another Superman stand-in) and his teammates require their virginal recruit to give them blowjobs before she can join.

Starlight: “I mean this is completely disgusting! It’s a betrayal of everything you stand for! You’re the Earth’s most mighty! You bring justice to all, you avenge the innocent!”

Homelander: “Yes, and we’d like to get our dicks sucked.”

Peter Berg’s 2008 Hancock started out almost as bad. Berg described the original 1996 script as “a scathing character study of this suicidal alcoholic superhero.” To keep a PG-13 rating, the revised “comedy” still had to trim back a statutory rape and a scene of Will Smith drinking with a 12-year-old minor (flying while under the influence stayed).

Hancock, Mink, Hammer, CoreFire, Homelander. That’s a lot of asshole. But they’re just the most recent examples.

Look at Rick Veitch’s Brat Pack.

Look at Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come.

Look (inevitably) at Alan Moore’s Watchmen.

Superhero-as-asshole is the shared premise of some of the very best comic book writing of the last quarter century.

But you can go back further. The 1960’s Silver Age happened because Stan Lee was the first writer willing to make a hero ugly. In Fantastic Four #1, the Thing calls frightened onlookers “Lily-livered cowards!” and picks a fight with Mr. Fantastic: “I’m going to paste you right in that smug face of yours!”

Spider-Man started out worse. After letting a thief run past him, he tells a cop: “Sorry, pal! That’s your job! I just look out for number one—that means—ME!”

The Hulk, Doctor Strange, Iron Man, Thor, they were all jerks.

But it’s not just the Silver Age. Comic books began with the biggest asshole of all, Jerry Siegel’s Superman.

Look at Action Comics #12. The guy busts into a radio station and shoves an announcer in the face: “Beat it! And tell that control engineer that if he shuts me off the air, I’ll make a bee-line for his gizzard!” He then announces his “war on reckless drivers” and, while dodging police bullets, demolishes a car pound (the owners are traffic violators), a used car lot (the cars are old and unsafe), and a manufacturing plant (the owner uses cheap materials). He even kidnaps the mayor and frightens him into obeying his orders.

This isn’t Robin Hood do-goodery on behalf of the common man. The guy is a superpowered egomaniac. It’s the trait DC covered up, made Siegel turn his Asshole of Steel into a well-mannered law-abider. But the arrogance has always been there, just under the leotard.

Good for Grant Morrison for giving us a peek again.

Tags: Austin Grossman, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison, Hancock, Joss Whedon, Peter Berg, President Obama, Scott Johnson, Stan Lee, Superman, The Boys

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October 3, 2011 The Death of Spandex

“The trend in uniform design is more toward making costumes for superheroes than uniforms for athletes.”

That’s ESPN reporter Paul Lukas. He’s also the editor of Uni-Watch.com. A website devoted not to sport teams but their uniforms. Lukas is not a fan of U of Maryland’s new string of high fashion helmets and jerseys. Under Armour (they’re designing all of Maryland’s varsity uniforms) is championing the new menswear trend of garishly bright colors.

But it’s not new for comic books. Joe Shuster’s Superman made the first superheroic fashion statement seventy years ago. And comic book heroes are still working the runways.

George Perez and Jesus Merino just retailored the Man of Steel’s skintight threads with a Kryptonian armor design (the red briefs have, mysteriously, vanished). And Sara Pichelli stitched a sassy new suit for Ultimate Spider-Man (the black and red is almost as bold as the brown skin underneath it).

In Hollywood, superhero costume design is its own industry. Look at just this year’s super fashion:

Designer Anna B. Sheppard trashed the spandex and went with a looser fitting cut for Captain America. The leather straps and metal buckles say “1940’s.”

Alexandra Byrne was thinking “ancient modernism” for Thor. The biggest challenge was the cape, which had to merge “completely believable” with the “sublimely magical.”

Ngila Dickson abandoned real-world fabrics. The Green Lantern costume is entirely motion-captured computer graphics.

David E. Kelley recently shot a Wonder Woman pilot for NBC, but his Amazon’s costume make-over didn’t make it into the fall line-up. Despite all the film fashion fun, the only superhero costumes on TV are on ESPN. Primetime heroes won’t touch them.

Syfy’s Alphas launched last summer. The team of superpowered government agents fight evil mutants in their street clothes. There’s not as much as a logo on their lapels.

Across the Atlantic, the BBC’s Misfits sport matching orange jumpsuits, but only because the characters are juvenile offenders clocking community service hours.

NBC’s Heroes solidified the trend in 2006, but it was the CW’s 2001 Superboy adaptation, Smallville, that first scissorsed the costume off a superhero.

The 1993 Lois and Clark, the 1988 Superboy, and the 1990 The Flash series all still featured their hero’s iconic wardrobes. Which was part of the problem.

“The appearance of realism in a super-hero costume,” explains Michael Chabon, “made from real materials is generally recognized to be difficult to pull off.” In fact, he goes on, it’s “hopeless” because the true superhero costume exists only on paper.

This is most obviously and hilariously true in the earliest attempts to move superheroes from comic books to screen. If you don’t admire Anna B. Sheppard’s Captain America, take a look at the 1944 film serial.

Adam West’s Batman could get away with leotarded camp in the 60’s. William Katt’s Greatest American Hero still could fifteen years later. The goofiness of their costumes was part of the appeal. But Tim Burton raised the bar with Batman in 1989. Low-budget leotards no longer cut it. Michael Keaton in Bob Ringwood’s award-winning batsuit changed the playing field. The 2000 X-Men said it outright: leather is better.

At least on the big screen. Responding to the same challenge, TV designers opted for a simpler solution. If it’s hopeless, why try?

Stan Lee never liked costumes anyway. “I always felt if I had a superpower,” Lee says in Confessions of a Superhero, “there’s no way I would wear a costume. I’m a show-off; I’d want everybody to [know]–I wouldn’t wear a mask, conceal my identity. And I wouldn’t want to look like some idiot in a costume.”

When he and Jack Kirby posed their first superhero team on the cover of a Marvel comic book in 1961, the Fantastic Four were no more fashion forward than the Alphas. The Thing made his debut in a men’s clothing store (“I’m sorry, mister, I just don’t have anything big enough for a man your size!”). It’s not till issue three that Invisible Girl reveals her secret superpower:

“Susan! You designed a costume for yourself!”

“And for you, too! It’s time we all had some colorful costumes!”

But now the anti-fashion fashion is filtering back into comic books. When Grant Morrison and Rags Morales revamped Action Comics, they made the most radical costume choice imaginable: Superman in work boots, blue jeans, and a t-shirt. There’s still an ‘S’ on his chest and a cape on his back, but the iconic unitard of the original comic book superhero is gone.

These surface changes are more than just surface changes. In comic books, costume is character. A change in tights is a change in meaning. The spandex look has marked superheroes as exotic outsiders since the 30’s. They fight for humanity, but their second skins separate them. They remain alien and so alienated.

Or they did. When TV’s Alphas or Misfits or Heroes perform extraordinary abilities in ordinary clothes, they are also performing their humanity. They are just people. People with really freaky skill sets, but at their core (which is a product of their surface) they are human. While their big screen brothers want to remain larger than life, the 21st century TV superhero is dressed for small-scale integration. We all pull our pants on one leg at a time.

So if you’re a costume connoisseur, stick with college football.