Slice of Life
Slice of Life
Let me tell you a little about something from my childhood and how society today is ruining it
Looking over my last dispatch, it seems a little grandiose: “the world has problems that we can solve together.” When I see someone in the public sphere virtue-signaling their commitment to some undefined altruism, nowadays I feel pretty suspicious.
I suppose I can at least give myself some credit for building the backdoor for me to mention Better Futures, the podcast miniseries I’ve released intermittently on the subject.
Someday soon I hope to give it a proper finale. However, I’ve since discovered the work of James Corbett and found happily that his #SolutionsWatch series already covers it better, so no one’s losing too much for my procrastination.
But, regardless, none of us should be surprised if I have a predilection for the grandiose. As you may have guessed, someone who introduced himself as an indie comic writer also grew up reading about superheroes.
Maybe some critical theorist would even trace this newsletter’s title to an adjacent affinity. Given the available clips of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the sewers of New York City waiting on deliveries and Spider-Man delivering pizzas as a part-time job, there’s even some crossover now and then. (Deadpool takes his with pineapple.) Fortunately, I’m not a critical theorist, and I have no inkling of how to explain these crossovers except to name both pizza and comics among life’s simple pleasures, and to say therefore they’d obviously resonate.
Still, I’m curious about these simple pleasures: curious enough, I guess, to risk ruining them with analysis. But I don't think I’m going too deep if I just say I’m sure that, to the same extent that you can trace my waistline to my gluttony for pizza, you can trace trace my potential grandiosity to my childhood love of superhero comics.
I can enjoy a slice of pizza today, but, sadly, I don’t think the conditions exist for me to enjoy superhero comics the way I enjoyed them when I was a kid. (Though I probably can’t enjoy pizza as much either. ) I’m nostalgic for the indulgence: wrapped in a blanket and floppy comics throughout my home state’s cold winters, I could escape from the everyday pressures of our world into one of adventure and excitement, where mighty heroes overcome insurmountable odds to prove that anything is possible and to ensure that justice will always prevail.
Though my capacity for the same joys seems to have waned with age, today I can better appreciate the value of growing up with moral exemplars starring in my narrative entertainment. Pleasures of the intellect still draw me to the genre’s nascent efforts to deconstruct its subjects and to problematize how it most often stages its heroes’ headline virtues, but in my early years, I couldn’t possibly have comprehended stories of the kind that pique my curiosity today. I’m glad for that: better, certainly, that I should read about characters doing their best to exemplify values like dauntless courage, selfless compassion, and a persevering commitment to justice.
Confronting danger with bravery and determination, superheroes stand up for what’s right, even when it may not be easy or convenient, and they put the needs of others before their own mere desires, sacrificing their own safety or well-being to protect the innocent and advance the greater good. Persisting always in their efforts to make a positive difference, superheroes persuade their fans to believe a better world is possible as long as one aspires to it, while seeing characters triumph over monumental obstacles can inspire readers to believe in themselves and their own ability to overcome challenges. In this way readers (young ones, at least) can connect with something larger than themselves and simultaneously believe in both the possibility and the importance of becoming the best versions of themselves.
I’m intrigued now to think, as I reflect on their presence in my own origin story, of how superheroes themselves originated within a particular historical context, adapting the tropes of myth and folklore to modern times. Janne Salminen evokes the impulse behind the genre’s origins while discussing those of Superman: “Clark Kent was a nervous, ineffectual journalist whose job was only to report events to the public, but Superman was a hero who could protect the public with ease [...] The Great Depression that started in 1929 gave a huge blow to the United States’ confidence, rendering most of the population powerless. It was as if Americans were no longer the masters of their destiny. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a promise to fix America, a pledge to make the government the protector of the people […] Superman reflected these same ideals and promises."
The function of superhero stories as mythic allegories for contemporary struggles would reappear in the following decades. As Superman embodied the hopes of a generation to find security and opportunity in the country’s economic reforms, the X-Men staged the American civil rights movement of the 1960s, with African Americans fighting for equal rights and an end to segregation and discrimination. Existing as a minority group facing prejudice and discrimination from non-mutants, who viewed them as a threat to society, the X-Men also struggled with their own identities and their place in society, much like African Americans and other marginalized groups who grappled with issues of identity and belonging in a society that cast them as inferior.
Of the superheroes introduced to readers during my childhood, I believe the most notable is Deadpool. I don’t know what that says about the tangible struggles that must have afflicted society at what Fukuyama named the end of history. But, as far as role models go, I can confidently say the 1990s didn’t have many: that was when I learned what a blowjob is because of a sitting U.S. President. More troubling, however, is that I don’t believe the superhero stories released since then have done much to repair their influence. While they’ve enjoyed a meteoric increase in cultural relevance, it seems to me that, in the degree to which they symbolize what the average person understands as hope and justice, superheroes have sadly plummeted.
Maybe my inner child has just shrunk back into an embryo. Regardless, the number of red flags I see keeps growing. Of course, they were never wholly absent, as Tom Secker writes: “During World War 2 the U.S. government produced ‘informational comics’ aimed at domestic and Allied audiences, while Marvel and DC started to produce comics aimed specifically at the military. The first ever issue of Captain America came out in March 1941, months before the U.S. joined the war. The front cover featured Cap leaping into action, socking Hitler in the jaw. It is no coincidence that Marvel legend Stan Lee served in U.S. military intelligence during the war, helping to produce propaganda. Meanwhile Jack Kirby and Joe Simon (the creators of Captain America) were members of the Writers War Board, a government-funded propaganda organization devoted to the U.S. war effort.”
Paul S. Hirsch tells us more: “The Writers’ War Board was an organization staffed by writers and artists who were big in popular culture at the time [....] The board secretly got all its funding from the Office of War Information, which was a larger propaganda agency during the war [....] the comic provides a perfect cover for propaganda. They look like such trash; people reading them are very unlikely to think that the government had anything to with producing them. The sleazy advertisements in comics, the poor printing, the general cheapness of the object itself—they all provided the perfect cover for state-produced propaganda.”
Still, despite an infancy as an instrument of the state, superhero comics possessed the narrative freedom for Captain America to abandon his post in 1974 due to his disillusionment with the terrorist actions of U.S. officials. But I’m not sure the space exists to tell the same stories today, in part because of how cinema has propelled superheroes toward their current cultural eminence. As David Saveliev observes, “military propaganda is entrenched in our pop culture.” In particular, reports Michael East, “Marvel has a long history of either promoting the military or having the Pentagon actively involved at some level.” To Sarah O'Malley Graham’s count, “at least six Marvel movies have received support from the DoD; Iron Man, Hulk (2003), Iron Man 2, Captain America, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Captain Marvel.”
The deeper I go down this rabbit hole, the more concerned I become that the objects of my nostalgia have been marshaled to ends more nefarious than putting a glorifying filter on soldiers. As the aforementioned James Corbett uncovers in his research on Elon Musk (at ~6:45), the world’s richest influencer had his presence seeded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe even in its planning stages as a model for (and fictional associate of) Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as the genius arms dealer Tony Stark. Since the Pentagon had contracts with the Iron Man movies and with Musk himself, Whitney Webb connects the obvious dots (at ~10:44) and accordingly posits that the military-industrial complex installed the image of Musk as a personal savior in their superhero propaganda.
As you can probably imagine, it feels bad to see that prominent heroes from the stories of my childhood have been conscripted into the service of American imperialism. Strange, too, to think that while in wartime their function as propaganda had been overt, today this function might have been not only obscured, but redirected to promote the stature of an aspiring technocrat who takes credit for coups that benefit his businesses.
Of course, I can think of little I can do at this moment to restore my childhood role models to their original statures as paragons of justice and virtue capable of inspiring genuine hope in those who are struggling. So, for now, I suppose my grandiose aspirations to problem-solving stand stymied. But, at least aware of reasons beyond my own age for why the joy I took in the superhero stories of my childhood should have become so difficult to find in them today. If nothing else, I can proceed in writing my own comics with confidence, knowing that it’s a worthy aim to correct superhero stories’ contemporary deficiencies, and believing that whether something’s worthy matters more than whether it’s fruitful.