We're not talking about an Authority or Squadron Supreme type who assumed state power-- the 30s Superman was more of a Robin Hood with superpowers. He recognized that in a society where the rich, powerful, and corrupt make the rules, only a powerful person willing to break the rules could achieve justice for the common person. V of V for Vendetta operates under a fairly similar philosophy. I've generally looked at the 30s Superman as a fantasy version of the anarchist concepts of "propaganda of the deed" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_deed) and "direct action" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_action).

In fairness to Miller, this is the vein in which superheroes were created. If you look at Seigel and Shuster’s first couple of dozen Superman stories, a benevolent dictator is exactly what he was. He singlehandedly imposed his will on everyone and everything through violence in the aim to create his own utopia. Like you, I think it’s a horrible way to portray them, but I don’t think it’s fair to single out Miller as some kind of fascist when many of the early superheroes, especially Superman, were created in this exact vein as well.

The difference being that Miller's doing it now, decades after the genre moved beyond those roots, and in a time period after we've seen in spades what dictatorships are capable of. If he were writing in 1938 I'd cut him some slack; he's not.

At best, having characters who are essentially designed around the use of violence wreak vast social change is a rather disturbing “benevolent dictatorship” sort of fantasy. (Frank Miller loves those, of course; his major critique of Superman et al. seems to be that they Haven’t simply taken over the world and forced it to be better for its own good.)

In fairness to Miller, this is the vein in which superheroes were created. If you look at Seigel and Shuster's first couple of dozen Superman stories, a benevolent dictator is exactly what he was. He singlehandedly imposed his will on everyone and everything through violence in the aim to create his own utopia. Like you, I think it's a horrible way to portray them, but I don't think it's fair to single out Miller as some kind of fascist when many of the early superheroes, especially Superman, were created in this exact vein as well.

1) How could one write a coherent superhero genre story in which the heroes materially address social ills like racism, etc.? Tales in which Captain America punches a Klansman do not count, by the way, for the blindingly obvious reason that punching a Klansman does not address racist social structures in any meaningful way.

It's beyond me.

But I don't take that to mean it's beyond EVERYONE, y'know. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM is a farce based on the premise that crossdressing is hilarious. Toni Morrison's BELOVED is a ghost story.

I'm basically of the mind that the right artist can do anything with ANYTHING.

2) If such a comic was written, would it have any affect whatsoever on the nonimaginary world, 99.9% of whose inhabitans don’t read sodding comics in the first place?

Who knows? I'm an art history minor, and it's pretty clear to me that anyone tying to find out the effects of art MOVEMENTS on real world history is an excersize in baseless speculation 99.9% of the time.

I think there's a possibility an individual work of art can change the world for the better. At least it's a nice idea.

You start demanding that, you've left the superhero genre behind. It can address real-world concerns, but it has to do so in a more sophisticated allegorical mode than these sorts of clodhopping efforts at "relevance" are capable of inhabiting. At best, having characters who are essentially designed around the use of violence wreak vast social change is a rather disturbing "benevolent dictatorship" sort of fantasy. (Frank Miller loves those, of course; his major critique of Superman et al. seems to be that they Haven't simply taken over the world and forced it to be better for its own good.)

Superhero comics read as direct rather than indirect political allegory are indeed antidemocratic, even fascist. This is why it's so much more interesting to find the indirect elements than to focus on the way in which power fantasies are -- gasp! shock! -- about power and then demanding that it be your power fantasy rather than someone else's.

As tot he rest of his post...well, it doesn't hold up at all, really. The Moors being better for the Jewish population of Spain doesn't seem to me to have much in the way of direct or immediate logical connection to the Palestine-Israel conflict. That latter problem has far more to do with rather specific claims to land and political autonomy, as well as with the particular political event that was the founding of Israel.

Prior to both Wahabbist Islam's rise in prominence and late-19th and early-20th century Zionisms, there isn't much conflict between Islam and Judaism, and they do share some solidarity as the "Others" of Christian Europe. But late political modernity and the demand for the state form as the mode of ethno-religious representatio, a historical force that transforms conceptions of ethnicity in the first place, has led to all manner of quite virulent conflicts. The Middle East -- and what a cartographically and historically loaded term that is -- is a flashpoint for reasons that really don't speak much to the prior political age or episteme of Moorish Spain.

Along the same lines, Adam has to invent a hypothetical sort of villain for his JLA example; you'll find no such thing in the comics as published, of course. Despero, Kanjar Ro, Zazzala, and the rest were generally portrayed as something between horriblemilitary dictators or outright specieist or racist conquerors who figured that all humanity was fit for slavery. And I notice as well that he stumbles again into the desire for benevolent dictatorship, for the aliens who conquer us but at least aren't racist and therefore are somehow morally superior. In short, it seems to me to concea an argument for totalitarianism. (I say "seems to me" because I invite other, more generous interpretations. I don't like calling people totalitarian sympathizers, not least because I doubt most people are such.)

And of course Adam neatly steps past the way in which the Moors were still rather far from ideal rulers, or even particularly humane ones. Similarly, the alien conquest example seems to assume that there will always be an oppressor and an oppressed; the hope expressed in these hypotheticals is not for a world without oppression but merely for a world in which prior oppressors get their turn under oppression. In short, it is history as an endless cycle of vengeance and violence. I'd much prefer that we bend our imaginations to utopian or at least ameliorative concepts of history and the political.

No, the demand that superhero comics do these sorts of things more generally is just not a particularly well-considered one upon examination. It's a demand that a mode of fantasy and a rather restrictive genre forsake itself for the psychological comfort of a small segment of its readership, or in some cases that the genre indulge the worst of its elements and allegorizations for that same reason rather than work to find the best of its possibilities.

In the end, it's an argument that profoundly misunderstands the role and the workings of fiction, mistaking its ability to reflect and allegorize the world for an idea that a change in the representation might change the world reflected and allegorized.

1) How could one write a coherent superhero genre story in which the heroes materially address social ills like racism, etc.? Tales in which Captain America punches a Klansman do not count, by the way, for the blindingly obvious reason that punching a Klansman does not address racist social structures in any meaningful way.

2) If such a comic was written, would it have any affect whatsoever on the nonimaginary world, 99.9% of whose inhabitans don't read sodding comics in the first place? That is, if fictional character Hal Jordan undoes millennia of racism in the fictional universe published by DC, thereby bettering countless fictional minorities, is anything other than the ludicrous power fantasy of a different political group (as opposed to the standard ludicrous fantasy of beating up Sinestro to save the omniverse this week) really being produced?

It is perfectly common and reasonable for people to point out that a powerful person has failed to address the concerns of their community. Consider this hypothetical. Let's say you have AIDS. The president in this hypothetical has failed time and again to include funding for AIDS research and treatment in his budget. Now, as a person with AIDS, you are also human. The hypothetical president in the same year approved funding for federal marshals for airplanes. Now, since you are a human and humans sometimes fly in airplanes, you are a beneficiary of this funding. Yet it would not seem out of place for you to say "the president has done nothing for people with AIDS." The speaker in this context is not saying that "nothing the president has done provides benefits to people with AIDS." Rather the speaker is saying, "the president has done nothing to address the SPECIFIC concerns that are particular to people with AIDS." Thus, the president's actions have shown insensitivity to the problem of AIDS and consequently disrespect to the people living with it.

Similarly, Green Lantern stopping Sinestro or Dr. Polaris may benefit African Americans because they hold membership in the broad category of humans, but GL has done nothing to address those concerns that are specific to African Americans as opposed to the broader community. In theory, GL could be a closet racist. It could be that he saves the world specifically out of a sense of loyalty to other white people and black people only benefit incidentally. By analogy, if an anti-aircraft gun shoots down a plane that is about to drop an H-bomb on your city, this is very good for the rats in your city who will not be h-bombed as a result. But it doesn't mean that the gunner has sympathies for the rodents or is concerned about the specific challenges faced by rodents-- traps, poisons, cats, etc. In fact, GL's failure to confront the injustice of racism on his homeworld while flying around space looking for wrongs to right on other worlds suggests that he doesn't see racism on earth as a concern worthy of his attention. The speakers comments are astute, articulate, and damning, both to GL as an individual, and on a metatextual level of comic books in general for having heroes confront imaginary supervillians rather than addressing real world injustices.

TO the speaker, Sinestro, Dr. Polaris, and other such costumed menaces undoubtedly seem far removed from the concerns he faces in his daily life. When he is searched and question by a cop simply for walking in a white neighborhood, this is not because of Sinestro. When a bank engages in redlining and makes it impossible for residents to engage in upkeep of his community, this is not because Dr. Polaris is making its financial decisions.. When he gets passed over for job promotion against a white guy with less experience and skill, it's not because Hector Hammond brainwashed his boss. When his kid is shot by a cop and an all-white jury acquits, the cop isn't Black Hand and Star Sapphire isn't on the jury. And when Martin Luther King is shot, it isn't by the Weaponers of Quard. The high flying adventures of Green Lantern seem utterly irrelevant to the real-life concerns of a man in racist society. Green Lantern has failed to address the injustices that plague this man.

Finally, it's not entirely clear that the things that benifit the white community and the establishment that GL defends always benefit the black man. As the white man has demonstrated himself time and again to not be the black man's friend, what's good for the white man is not necessarily what's good for the black man.

When the Moors invaded Spain this was a very good thing for Jews in Spain. Moslems almost always treated Jews far been than Christians did, a fact that Jews who now ally themselves with the US against Palestine and Iraq (if you don't think the US is an enemy of Palestine, then please consider who pays for Israel's weapons) would do well to remember.

Perhaps some of the alien invaders that the JLA is always fighting back would treat the black man better than white Americans once they took over. They might not send him to die in VietNam, they might not assassinate his leaders, they might not brutalize the women of his community who work for civil rights. Frankly, to the black man, the alien invasion took place 500 years ago. The fact that that the aliens have their own cop to protect them isn't really something that he is going to be heartened by. Let's say you were the Silver Age Braniac's bodyguard. Are the people of the bottle cities that Sinestro kidnaps supposed to see you as their hero for protecting their kidnapper-- even if some of the threats to Sinestro might also compromise your safety? Let's say in this hypothetical that Brainiac was an accepted member of Coluan society and it was a social norm of Coluans to kidnap cities from their homeworlds and put them in bottles. If Colu had superbeings who defended it from invaders, say the Justice League of the Continent between 33 and 64 longitude and 23 and 45 latitude (Coluans are nothing if not precise), would you consider them your heroes if they defended Colu from invaders, but did nothing to provide redress to the bottledwellers, the great-grandchildren of the kidnapped denizens of their respective planets? Why would you assume that the aliens would be any worse to you than the Coluans have been? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

The panels posted above are among the most poignant, powerful, and astute in the history of comics, and the glib attack on them represented by this post reflects a fundamental lack of appreciation to one of the most courageous and ethical comics ever printed. The irony is Brian seems possessed of the same kinds of rationalizations that probably prevented Hal Jordan from confronting racism before this moment. "I'm looking at the big picture-- I can't be bothered with the specific concerns of individual communities." The difference is that Hal is at heart a hero, a person devoted to justice, and when confronted with his own hypocrisy, he slumps in shame and has the moral courage to admit his error. Brian, instead of jeering at these panels, you'd do best to reread them--and perhaps consider following Hal's example.

I think that the main difference between the two scenes, and why they don’t really deserve comparison, is that the GL scene is trying to educate the reader about a social problem, and the CA is not.

i agree.

as someone already said, the GL/GA scene works on a subtextual (or "meta"... urgh) level. really it's about addressing the expectations and priorities of the reader as much as - or more than - it is about Hal's. the Cap scene just doesn't work on that level, especially since CW aimed squarely for Hollywood-style realism.

doesn't make it a particularly strong argument by the old black guy, of course, but... i think it's still oddly effective. i know it affected ME when i first read it: it was one of those things that i had just never really thought about at the time as a young superhero comics fan... and i am black.

Here's my scan from the Showcase reprint issue from around 1991: http://www.adamcasey.com/images/greenlantern76.jpg

Yes, they are both silly arguements. But one of them at least deserves to be an arguement.

Theno

Ah, well. "Whoops", he said, as he ate some cake and proceeded on his way.

Yeah, never mind. If you have to explain it, it's not really that funny. Moving on!

The scene that Jenkins wrote just makes you want to punch a fictional reporter in the face. Hard. Repeatedly. I'm not sure if that was the intended emotional impact, but it's neither cathartic nor stirring.