Superhero Myth

[woodwardiocom]

A good summation of the superhero origin story, from The Animated Batman: An Unofficial Guide:

"The essence of a superhero myth is that some person or group should be set apart from the rest of humanity and enobled by a tragedy, which both gives them superpowers and causes them to consciously choose to take on the superhero role."

(This neatly illuminates Spider-Man's origin, in which he gets powers first, has his tragedy later, and in between is not a hero.)

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

"A tragedy" is overspecific and not uniformly accurate.

Examples? The Golden Age Wonder Woman, who came to Man's World for love of a male aviator. The Silver Age Green Lantern, who was chosen to bear the power ring because he was already fearless and honest—that is, already ennobled. The Silver Age Flash, who seemingly was inspired to use his powers as a superhero by his childhood reading of comic books. The Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl, who were sent to Earth as police officers. Thor, who picked up the enchanted walking stick by what in the original narrative was pure happenstance. The Fantastic Four, only one of whom was a tragic figure.

The superhero is empowered, ethically noble, and set apart from humanity—but the alienation need not be tragic. Or, at any rate, I'm not prepared to buy Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and the Fantastic Four as not being legitimate examples of the superhero myth.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Perhaps those are examples of superheros whose origin tragedies were yet to be told, Bill; perhaps the tragic origin meme is picked up subconsciously by later writers who fill it in at some point for superheros who don't have one as yet Thus, Flash's origin has come to encompass the sacrifice and transformation of Barry Allen into the lightning bolt; Green Lantern's has come to involve the petulant extinction of life on their planet by the Oans and the violation of the universe by Krona.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

In the first place, I don't see how that's tragic for Hal Jordan.

In the second place, it took place decades after the original stories were published. I have the first two bound volumes of the Silver Age Green Lantern stories; they don't have a hint of tragedy. Certainly, it was possible for later writers to make up arguably tragic, and in any case darker, story elements, to suit the tastes of a later era. But those are no more part of the essential story of the character than the camp aspects of the 1960s Batman are part of an essentially silly and comedic Batman.

In the third place, given that there was no hint of tragedy in those Silver Age characters as originally published—but arguably tragic elements were later added—you could look at any character whatever, no matter how bright and cheerful, and say, "But there are potential tragic elements that will eventually be brought out. You just don't see them yet." And at that point you have what Karl Popper would call an unfalsifiable hypothesis.

I think critical interpretation of a text has to look at the text itself, and not at what some later writer does, or may potentially do, with the characters and the situation portrayed in that same text. Otherwise you just get unsound interpretations, like Christian readings of the Old Testament that take everything in it as a prefiguration of some element in the life of Christ in the New Testament.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

I'm not taken with "should be" but the rest is good.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Seems to fail on Superman as well. While his powers do stem from a tragedy in a sense, he was made a part of humanity by the Clarks and that's where he was enobled.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Superman's original origin story involved the capital conviction of an innocent woman before he took up the name and the cause of truth and justice full time.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if that counts. It's not constantly retold in the comics, and it's not part of the character history that every fan knows, like Spider-man not stopping the burglar, or Batman seeing his parents shot dead.