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Some Superhero Re-Construction Needed by Darin Wagner

Darin Wagner writes for Bleeding Cool;

This week we got some news about DC Comics' latest attempt at reviving Captain Marvel. The news got me thinking once again about the Big Two and why the industry has been on life-support lately. In addition to the entrenched liberalism that persists in much of the content (which I talked about last month), there are related factors at work as well and those factors are deconstruction and a persistent trend of making characters thematically darker.

The thing that first struck me about the recent news regarding the Captain Marvel revival was the title "The Curse of Shazam!" Right away, this title is telling us that this is to be a dark take on the character. After recent stories featuring Freddy Freeman getting his mouth sewn shut and Mary Marvel looking like a Suicide Girls pin-up who works at Hot Topic when she's not whoring, a "curse" woven into the Marvel Family mythos is apparently what the brass over at DC thinks will shake things up. There's admittedly not a lot to go on right now when it comes to this latest attempt at bringing Captain Marvel/Shazam to the forefront, but writer Geoff Johns tells us this is going to be "all-ages" material and I'd like to believe him. I will be very interested in seeing what "all-ages" according to Johns looks like. (I have enjoyed some of Geoff Johns' work in the past.)

Deconstruction has plagued the comic book superhero for a long time now. Some think it began with Spider-Man's origin… where Peter Parker initially went into show business and had to be guilt-tripped into becoming a crime-fighter. Some say it started long before that and some think it started in the 1980s with books like WATCHMEN and THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Regardless of when it started, it has long been the standard in superhero comics. No longer, it seems, are there any sufficiently good people wearing tights. Every superhero has been corrupted to one degree or another and too many of them have been corrupted to the point that it becomes very, very difficult to root for them while reading about their struggles.

The best example I can think of is the Incredible Hulk. Back in the 1980s the character's origin was given a new wrinkle. We learned that Bruce Banner had been abused as a toddler and that this was the new and true source for the Hulk's rage. Later, this idea was expanded and the character's origin was altered so that he was actually suffering from MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) long before the iconic Gamma Bomb blast gave him the power to transform into the Hulk. Later still, another new wrinkle was added: that Bruce Banner had in fact killed his own father at his mother's gravesite in a fight, again years before the Gamma Bomb. Even later still, the character's origin was given another significant addition: that Bruce Banner had tried to blow up his high school with a homemade bomb… making him somewhat allusive to a "Columbine kid." The effect was cumulative. The character got progressively darker and darker to the point where I didn't want to read about him anymore. I couldn't relate to this guy at all. It was a lot easier to relate to Bruce Banner when he was just a scientist who turned into a heroic monster than when he became a mess of schizophrenic psychoses. He depressed me. Prior to all of these changes, you could sum up the Hulk's origin by saying that Banner became the Hulk because of an act of heroism in trying to save a teenager's life. After said changes were made to the character, one could not say that. If there was ever a character that needed a complete reboot, it's the Hulk. The Bill Bixby television series pilot started with a title card which read "Within each of us, ofttimes, there dwells a mighty and raging fury." That would be a good place for such a reboot to start.

I have always rejected the notion that, in order for a character with powers or skills to become a superhero, they have to suffer some major tragedy first. Whether it's a girlfriend stuffed into a refrigerator or the murder of a family member or a rape, it's just not needed. The cynical notion that an audience won't accept a protagonist doing good for the sake of doing good  as readily as a protagonist who has some sort of twisted emotional need to fight and punish evil is for the birds and really always has been. Apply this to the real world and see how it shakes out. I doubt you will find that a majority of firefighters became firefighters to avenge a loved one who perished in a fire.

What the industry leaders need to start doing is re-constructing, rather than deconstructing, their characters. This needs to be done on a massive scale. This doesn't mean making them all the same in cookie-cutter fashion. This does not mean dumbing down the stories. There are some very talented people working in comics right now who can do this.

I'm only reading one Marvel comic book right now on a regular basis and that comic book is, of all things, DAREDEVIL. Mark Waid has got me reading and liking a comic book that, historically speaking, I should not be. He's found a way to tell dark stories that don't feel dark… meaning the darkness doesn't compromise the entertainment value or the fun-factor. He's said that all he wanted to do was write a Daredevil comic that didn't make someone want to reach for a stiff drink after reading it. He's succeeding.

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