What can they
teach you about writing? Anniversary Edition
Read Part One HERE
Part Two:
Superman
My mother worried
that I, her impractical son who wanted to be a writer, might not survive in
this dog-eat-dog world.
Joe’s mother worried, too, about the future of Joe who as a child had
drawn pictures on the bedroom wall and wanted to be an artist.
— Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman
The original Superman was a villain.
With great power comes great willingness
to abuse it. Among the traits that make Superman truly super, you’ll find his
humility and self-control. He’s no braggart, nor is he a chump -- Clark’s human
parents did a good job, as far as comic-book parents go.
Mind you, being a parent in a
comic book is one of the most dangerous occupations ever, especially if your
child is super-powered. I guess Smallville is so utterly boring a place -- why,
it might even be the fictional American equivalent of Weston-super-mare -- that
no super-villain would want to go there. But I shall rein in my rambling
pen/keyboard/bag of screeching weasels and proceed with the subject at hand,
which is Superman.
Superman was created in the
1930s, a time of social turmoil and international unrest, by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Like Captain
America, he would enjoy the pleasure of punching Hitler in the face.
Superman is an alien that
looks like a human being, so he dresses up like one of us to further the
illusion that he is one of us. As Bill
observes in Kill Bill before Bill is
killed, Batman and Spiderman have to put on masks in order to be recognized as
Batman and Spiderman, but Supes needs to take
off his own mask for people to acknowledge his godlike persona.
There’s one major problem with
Superman -- yes, you guessed it. Too much power, too few limitations. Which is
why kryptonite, the one element that can harm Kal-el, has over the years been
unfolded into an appalling number of varieties. It’s like feature
creep, except with imaginary metals or rocks or crystals or whatever kryptonite
is supposed to be.
I’ll be honest with you,
Superman is the hero I love to hate. He’s too good, too perfect, and way too
easy to write as a Divine Boy Scout. But that doesn’t mean we can’t all learn a
lot from him. Superman is a test for writers, as it’s damn hard to write a good Superman story, let alone a
brilliant one.
 |
| Some have got what it takes. |
So, what can Superman teach
you about writing a story, novel or play?
As usual, we’re
going to look at symbols and semiotics. Not just because it’s fun, no no no.
You see, the more you know about symbols, the more you understand that symbols are an indispensable part of any
good writer’s arsenal.
The Colors
Why is Superman’s hair black?
Black is wisdom. It is also connoted with
imperial power. The undeniable connection between Superman and the temptations
of empire is explored in the landmark graphic novel Red Son, in which the Superman
we know and love is reimagined as a Soviet superhero. Eventually, Superman becomes
a benevolent dictator and fixes all that is wrong with the world. Lex Luthor
holds out as president of a beleaguered United States, a capitalist wreck of a
country[1] which finds itself running out of allies faster than you
can say “metahuman cold war.”[2]
 |
Art by Alex Ross
Note that the shield worn by an older,
wiser Superman as first seen in Kingdom Come
does away with the color yellow.
More black represents added wisdom and
experience.
|
Why does he wear a blue suit?
Blue is connoted with truth -- and now overwhelmingly associated with
the male gender.
In his Dictionary of Literary Symbols, Michael
Ferber writes that “blue is traditionally the color of heaven, of hope, of
constancy, or purity, of truth, of the ideal (…).” Ferber goes on to explain
that, to the ancient Greeks, blue was the color of mourning -- so it might be
said that blue-clad Superman wears funereal blue to honor his ancestors, long
turned to dust.
Why is the S-shield red on yellow?
Red is a martial
color, whereas yellow is jovial. Whatever is martial comes from the god Mars,
and what’s jovial, solar, energetic, comes from Jupiter. The god, not the
planet.
We now turn to
John Michael Greer’s Encyclopedia of the
Occult, which tells us the Yellow Ray was the third of the Seven Rays, which were (are?)
the basic creative energies of the universe. “[I]t corresponds to the Buddhist
concept of ‘skilful means,’ the adaptation of all available resources in the
quest for enlightenment,” writes the Archdruid of the AODA.
When you put all the colors together, what do they mean?
Blue is dominant
-- therefore, if blue stands for ‘truth,’ then that is Superman’s dominant
semiotic/ideographic motif.
Red is too
prominent in the god-hero’s Kryptonian[3] threads but, to speak
plainly, without all that red, Superman might look something like this:
 |
| Dr. Fate: Great character, terrible costume. |
By combining the three
primary colors I discussed above, Superman’s iconic figure embodies truth (blue),
forceful action (red) and longevity (yellow). He is the Icarus that cannot die. Superman
flies under his own power, and closeness to the sun only makes him more powerful. The cape doesn’t melt
like wax, you know.
A Superman Is
Known
by the Company He Keeps
 |
| Cover to the Trinity graphic novel. Art by Matt Wagner. |
Superheroes are cosplay for the gods in your mind. These vast, mysterious and obsessive forces haven’t really gone away; they just change the way a dead body sinks into the earth and new life blossoms from decomposing matter.
Superman is part
of an informal trinity, something which people who don’t read comics may not be
aware of. Anyone with more than a passing interest in mythology will recognize
the gods wearing these masks.
Wonder Woman:
Diana, Artemis, Tana, Athena/Minerva, with a sprinkling of Atalanta, Sekhmet,
Ninhursag
Batman: Pluto/Hades,
Mercury/Vulcan, Dionysus, Erra, Nergal
The Greek Diana was
a moon-goddess who, like so many others, had the stars for companions. Now, let’s
take a closer look at Wonder Woman’s uniform.
 |
| Hmm. |
Batman pretty much
lives in a cave. Forget the mansion. The Wayne mansion means nothing. If Batman could, he’d do away
with the mansion altogether. Batman is subterranean. Like Hades, he’s got all
he needs underground… Except for a Persephone. Methinks there’s only one woman
for Batman, and she hasn’t been written yet.
And Superman, he
flies: how paradoxical, this biped who is not bound to the Earth, who defies
gravity.
In the end,
Superman is a deity in fancy dress. His Apollonian connection with the sun is
more than explicit. The Osirian undercurrent was finally confirmed in the 1990s when he
died and came back from the dead. Yeah, yeah, he was just thrown into some kind
of Kryptonian hibernation. I call shenanigans. The original storyline was
called “Death of Superman,” not “Superman’s Restful, Two-Year Nap Among the Seemingly
Dead.”
Superman died and
came back from the underworld. This is a resurrection story. In fact it is the resurrection story we’ve been
telling for a few thousand years and there’s no glossing over that.
The
Superman-Batman-WW triad echoes the old pagan trinity,
that of the Goddess
and her two children/consorts:
- Superman is the sun-god, summer, harvest, the
fruitful half of the year
- Batman is the elder god of death, the seed
slumbering under packed snow, the barren half of the year, presiding over
waning days and waxing nights
Together, they’re
Wonder Woman’s symbolic ‘husbands,’ as neither Superman nor Batman fully
represent the divine male aspect. They must vie for the Goddess’s affections
together, because day/night/death/resurrection can only exist as pairs.
 |
Art by Alex Ross
“Superman obeys the Talmudic injunction to do good for its own sake and heal the world where he can. Siegel and Shuster had created a mythic character who reflected their own Jewish values.”
— Blair Kramer
It's no accident that artists so often depict Superman holding up the Daily Planet globe. Superman is the twentieth-century Atlas. |
Alt-Supermen or,
How I Learned to
Stop Worrying
and Love Me a Superman
Clone
 |
| Apollo & Midnighter |
Apollo’s name is
self-explanatory. His body, like Superman’s, works as a solar battery. Apollo
can also fly; cleave a Skyrim mammoth in two with an energy blast (OK, I made
that up); and punch the hell out of whatever needs getting the hell punched out
of it. ...What an utterly dreadful sentence that was. Let us forget about it.
Midnighter shares
Batman’s fixation on fighting crime one shovel hook at a time -- he’s mostly a
guy who thinks with his fists. Or batons. Whatever. He punches a lot of people
and seems to enjoy it. What can I say? Ah! I know. “Loose cannon.” “Psycho.” “Danger
to himself and others.”
Being married to
each other, Apollo/Midnighter take the Superman/Batman bromance to the next
logical level. Apolloman and Batnighter need and complement each other like day
and night, light and dark… You know this dichotomy, you’ve seen it a million
times.
The Sentry
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| Did I just hear someone say "knockoff"? No? Maybe just my imagination, then. Left: Art by Adi Granov. Right: Art by Jae Lee and José Villarrubia. |
The most powerful being in the Marvel Universe, Robert Reynolds, is afraid to set a foot outside the house. Whatever’s still human about the Sentry is afraid of all the power he wields.
One major
difference between the Sentry and Superman is that the Sentry suffers from
comic-book style dissociative
identity disorder. His other personality is the Void. Now there’s an
interesting parallel with Clark Kent -- because Clark is a blank of Superman’s
creation. Clark is performance art. Clark
is a character created by a character. Chew on that for a second. His name
might as well be Blank Kent.
(And if Superman’s
hard to write, Kent is even harder.)
The ultimate
almighty sad sack who is as fascinating as he is insufferable. He treats his
wife like shit because, let’s face it, given his mental and matter-bending
powers, she’s no better to him than a housebroken gerbil. Which is pretty darn
bleak.
Manhattan is
something of an indictment on Superman and the whole concept of superhumans. It
is hard for most human beings to empathize with, and even harder to recognize
personhood in non-humans.
Size matters. When something is
smaller than you, somehow it seems less
important. Most of us wouldn’t think twice about killing a cockroach.
From Manhattan’s
point of view, we are all cockroaches. So he moves to Mars where the collective
chattering of mankind won’t bother him. How wonderful for the rest of us.
Supreme
 |
| Art by Alex Ross I know it was Alan Moore's idea, but... Counterparts for Krypto & Supergirl? Too much. Too much. |
When the supremely
awful Rob Liefeld invited Alan Moore to write his Superman knock-off, Moore
said, “Welp, you just have to realize your comic’s not very good to being with.”
The English pen-mage would only work on Supreme if he could chuck out everything that had been done with the
character.
Unsurprisingly,
Moore’s run did much to elevate Supreme’s status as a fictional character. Not
difficult, if you consider that Supreme’s standing before that was less than
zero, at least to this writer.
And if you think I’m
being mean, that’s because you’ve never suffered through a Rob Liefeld comic.
These
super-powered characters show you just how wrong an omnipotent being can go. No
less important, the stories they appear in serve as proof that silliness is a
very, very hard thing to avoid when the rules of your fictional universe are
too flexible and loose.
KEEP READING:
 |
| More power to you, Lois! I'd rather kiss Dracula, too! Or drink a four-pint jug of Treponema pallidum! |
POST-SCRIPTA
On comic-book parenting: Batman’s parents were terrible, wandering the grimy backstreets of Gotham looking to get themselves killed. They got their wish. Spiderman’s were even more terrible: they died before Spiderman readers, and Peter Parker for that matter, even got to meet them.
How awful is that? Not as awful as Donald Duck’s harebrained (duck-brained?) progenitors, who abandoned a poor lonely egg by the roadside, which would later be picked up by Donald’s… uncle?
Where in hell do Huey, Dewey and Louie come from, and what exactly makes them Donald’s nephews? By the way, Donald has a sister called Dumbella, who ships off her ducklings and then simply forgets about them. Or -- this is more likely -- all the writers and animators at Disney forgot about Dumbella because a) Dumbella is obviously a single-use moniker and b) Back in the 1930s everyone was either drunk, crazy, or both. I mean, watch a couple of episodes of Boardwalk Empire and you’ll see what things were ramping up to.
On Kryptonite: If you pay too much attention to these things you wake up one morning, it’s 6 degrees centigrade and raining outside, your cat is dead and your vegan girlfriend took off with a wall-eyed Colombian pool cleaner. None of which has happened to me, but never, ever put your fannish tastes ahead of a human being who loves you.
FURTHER READING
Happy
45th Anniversary, Superman! by Jerry Siegel || The aptly-named Superman Supersite || Wayne Boring, the definitive Superman artist
FOOTNOTES
[1] I’m not making
a political point, I’m summarizing the plot. That’s all.
[2] But why? Why
would you want to say “metahuman cold war”? More importantly, can you say it in
mixed company without advertising yourself as an environmental hazard?
[3] Microsoft Word
didn’t recognize the word Kryptonian.
I thought coders & software developers were all supposed to be comic-book
fans! Ach, my faith in humanity is hereby diminished.
 |
| Another breathtaking tableau from Kingdom Come. Go and get the damn thing already. |
What can they teach you about writing? -- is a weekly
series of articles drawing on public statements by talented people, and how
such statements apply to the act of writing. “Talented people” does not mean
they’re entertainers, nor do I expect you to agree with my definition of talent
at all times.
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