by Tom De Haven
Our Hero
Our Hero
Superman on Earth
Tom De Haven
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW HAVEN & LONDON
Copyright © 2010 by Tom De Haven.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Set in Janson type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Haven, Tom.
Our hero : Superman on earth / Tom De Haven.
p. cm. — (Icons of America)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-11817-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Superman (Fictitious character) I. Title.
PN6728.S9D3 2010
741.5’973 — dc22 2009018206
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Icons of America
Mark Crispin Miller, Series Editor
Icons of America is a series of short works by leading scholars, critics, and writers on American history, or more properly the image of America in American history, through the lens of a single iconic individual, event, object, or cultural phenomenon. Other titles in the series include:
Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, by Susan Jacoby
Andy Warhol, by Arthur C. Danto
The Big House, by Stephen Cox
Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell
Fred Astaire, by Joseph Epstein
Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, by Rachel Shteir
The Hamburger: A History, by Josh Ozersky
Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, by Gore Vidal
King’s Dream, by Eric J. Sundquist
Nearest Thing to Heaven: The Empire State Building and American Dreams,
by Mark Kingwell
Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory, by Jonathan Zimmerman
Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace, by Steve Fraser
Forthcoming titles include:
Toni Bentley on George Balanchine’s Serenade
Kyle Gann on John Cage’s 4’33”
To Santa
still the same
Contents
Acknowledgments
Our Hero
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Art Spiegelman for suggesting me for this project, and the legion of writers who have tackled Superman the Icon before me, especially Thomas Andrae, Michael Citron, Tom Crippen, Les Daniels, Michael Eury, Jules Feiffer, Michael Fleisher, Robert C. Harvey, Gerard Jones, Jake Rossen, Bruce Scivally, Jim Steranko, James Vance, Bradford C. Wright, and Craig Yoe; without their trailblazing, even groundbreaking, work, Our Hero would not have been possible. To Nicky Brown I am much indebted for assistance in writing about her remarkable grandfather, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson.
For their suggestions, tips, referrals, and support, many thanks as well to John Beckman, Laura Browder, Russell Dunn, Steve Dunn, Jackie Estrada, Michael T. Gilbert, Elizabeth Hand, Tom Inge, Christopher Irving, Elizabeth Kaplan, Batton Lash, Amanda Matetsky, Harry Matetsky, Eric Reynolds, Mark Svensson, Roy Thomas, and Kristy Valenti.
Finally, I want to express my deep gratitude to the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation for offering me summer residencies on Norton Island, Maine (“the coolest place on earth”), where much of this essay was drafted, and to my great and generous friend Faye Prichard (mayor of Ashland, Virginia, “the center of the universe”) for her editorial input and bibliographic expertise.
Our Hero
1
Over a span of three weeks in late spring 2006, I spent some part of almost every day on the telephone being asked and answering questions about Superman, Superman, Superman. Mostly it was newspapers and press services calling me, but a few radio stations did too, even a couple of podcasts. Superman Returns, the Bryan Singer movie starring Brandon Routh, was set to open in ten bazillion theaters worldwide, and American media were generating feature stories galore in breathless, complicit anticipation. But why call me for some (hopefully) pithy and (possibly) illuminating commentary about the character and the upcoming movie (about which I personally knew nothing)? Because half a year earlier, Chronicle Books had published a novel I’d written about Superman, my version of Superman, and that, somehow, qualified me as an authentic “Superman expert.” Flattering to be so considered, but not really the case. It’s Superman! had nothing to do with Singer’s film, or with the Smallville television program, or with the Warner Brothers animated cartoon series, or even, for that matter, with the monthly Superman comic books. With the permission and approval of DC Comics (but without any input or strictures), I’d set my story during the Great Depression and placed Superman back in his original 1930s context—his first appearance was in Action Comics number 1, published in late spring 1938. The fun for me had been to imagine the Man of Steel physically and morally, even politically, as he’d been portrayed at the start by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the two teenagers from Cleveland who created him. Written in noirish meter without too much kidding around, it was (yet another bildungsroman) about the farm boy Clark Kent once he discovers he’s stronger than anyone else. And can fly. It’s Superman! had been widely reviewed, so my name kept popping up during database searches for Superman authorities.
Although I don’t enjoy being interviewed and I’m not savvy at it—I tend to meander—I almost never (okay: I never) turn down a request for one. Who doesn’t like seeing his name in print or hearing her prerecorded voice on the radio, even when half the time you come off sounding like a real knucklehead? Besides, it’s self-promotion. I could sell a few books, maybe. It’s a theory, at least.
What I kept being asked pretty much boiled down to three questions, usually asked in the same order. Why has Superman lasted for almost seventy years? Can you explain his appeal? Does he still matter in the twenty-first century?
For the first two questions I had decent answers, I thought, despite their sounding canned by the last few interviews. Why has Superman lasted? To begin, he has the solid advantage of being the first comic book superhero. Cachet right there—no? But really, it’s the premise. You can’t beat it. Doomed planet, sole survivor, secret identity, Earth’s mightiest hero. Beautiful. And its simplicity has enabled hundreds of writers (comics writers, screenwriters, songwriters, librettists, poets, novelists, bubble-gum-card miniaturists) working over a period of seven decades to dream up tens of thousands of Superman narratives.
Brandon Routh, skinny Man of Steel, in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns, 2006 (PhotoFest Digital, © DC Comics)
Superman is forever a work in progress, changing, sometimes subtly, other times radically, but normally (not always, but normally) in ways that have kept him popular, to greater or lesser degrees, for several generations. At the same time, certain parts of his makeup—his essence, the crux of him—have never altered. Or when they have, corrections soon have been made, his integrity reconfirmed.
No matter the incarnation, Superman is a hardworking guy who gets things done. Whatever he puts his mind to. He’s John Henry without the steam-drill competition and the fatal heart attack. As Tom Crippen, writing in the Comics Journal, put it, “Superman isn’t there to live out our fantasies. … Half the time he’s doing something you yourself would not want to do. Bu
t when he performs one of his feats, he’s making a point on our behalf: that the universe is still our size. Existence is so built to our scale” (“Big Red Feet,” 171).
In the 1930s Superman was Tom Joad in aerialist’s tights: a gadfly, a caped vigilante, a working-class warrior fighting for better and more equitable social conditions. In the 1940s he became a personification of the American fighting spirit. Although in the comic books he by and large sat out World War II, somehow Superman emerged from it a totem of national indomitability, enterprise, and victory. (The posterlike—recruiting-posterlike — comic book covers that showed him hoisting the Stars and Stripes or balancing a bald eagle on his forearm no doubt had much to do with that.) During the 1950s and ’60s he seemed, despite being freighted with more and more superpowers, far less like a force of nature and more like, well, your favorite uncle — affable, available, a little bit melancholy, but just a big old kid at heart. (In the comic books, that is. On television he was George Reeves, maybe not your favorite uncle—too scowly—but surely the most capable one, the guy who would show up at your house grumbling a little and fix the furnace when your dad didn’t have a clue.) In the 1970s Superman slimmed down, like Schwarzenegger after steroids, and was suddenly a Baby Boomer in robust early maturity. (And in the movies he was, indelibly, Christopher Reeve.) In the 1980s—
There, or right around there, I usually was interrupted. Why didn’t I just go ahead and explain his appeal?
His appeal. Okay. Start with this: Superman is an immigrant, which gives him American cred instantly and automatically. But he’s also the ultimate immigrant. The Patron Saint of immigrants. Superman (or baby Kal-El, his birth name) didn’t just cross steppes and continents, borders and oceans to get here, he crossed the universe! (Come to think of it, he’s also an illegal immigrant.)
Superman happens to be an orphan as well, and the orphan is a pretty fraught character type, his plight and opportunity a recurring theme in everything from tall tales and folk ballads to children’s literature and literary fiction. Popular fiction, too, for that matter. The orphan is charged with creating her own identity, often from scratch; the orphan either has none, or loses all, of his social status; the orphan prizes self-reliance, and lives self-reliantly.
But Superman isn’t a mere orphan; he is (at least in the original and “classic” version) a double orphan, having lost two sets of parents, first Kryptonian, then Kansan. Nobody showed him how to change the course of mighty rivers or bend steel in his bare hands; the poor kid had to learn it all by himself.
Then there’s the matter of mobility. American exceptionalism would have it that we don’t end up in the same place we started, and is there a more basic national fantasy, from James Fenimore Cooper through Bruce Springsteen, than the imperative to pull up stakes, hit the road, and light out—to go and go now? Who is more unfixed, unfettered, or freer, than a man who can fly?
And of course I couldn’t not mention Superman’s religious, or parareligious, trappings: savior from the sky, messiah from heaven, looks human but isn’t. The Christian symbolism. And the Jewish. Moses in the reeds, all of that.
I had good answers to the first two standard questions; glib ready-mades, but still pretty good. Third question, though? Always gave me trouble. Does Superman still matter in the twenty-first century? Matter. Matter how? Superman’s name, his image, his Big-S graphic, even his logo are recognized by practically everyone on Earth, and his unalterable baggage (Krypton/ Kents/Metropolis/Lois/Luthor/Daily Planet) remains an effortlessly retrievable part of our shared cultural knowledge. Comic books featuring Superman continue to sell—nowhere near the number of copies they once did, but at three bucks a pop they still make money. Smallville is a multiseason hit, one of the biggest in television syndication, and Warner Communications hardly would have burned through two hundred million dollars bankrolling and marketing a movie about him if the company wasn’t confident that there existed a large audience, a worldwide audience, eager to see him back in action. So yes, Superman still matters—that way. As a lucrative property, an aggressively protected trademark, a dependable, familiar entertainment franchise.
But matters-matters? Matters as something emotionally powerful, as a signifier of virtues and qualities we automatically profess to esteem, as an avatar of American-ness? Or matters the way, for example, The Simpsons does now, or Batman or Spider-Man or Indiana Jones—as both a cultural touchstone and a meaningfully coded tile in the national mosaic? Does Superman still matter in any of those ways? His anima, drive, and motives, let’s face it, seem fundamentally out of sync: he’s not alienated, he airs no grievances, and he doesn’t seek vengeance. (While discussing John Ford’s The Searchers one Sunday in the New York Times, the film critic A. O. Scott wrote that “the monomaniacal quest for vengeance undertaken by a lone hero at odds with the society he’s expected to protect: it’s sometimes hard to think of a movie from the past 30 years from Taxi Driver to Batman Begins that doesn’t take this theme.” Well, there were always the Superman movies.)
Despite his omnipresence, Superman looked to me suspiciously like a relic, sole survivor not only of Krypton, but of a USA where truth, justice, and the American way were unambiguous concepts, not in the least ironic or slippery. In the civilization of You Tube, Facebook, Grand Theft Auto, dogmatic politics, checkbook justice, and an inexhaustible fascination with creepy athletes and detoxing celebrity blondes, could Superman possibly matter in ways he once did? Or was he now, and from now on, essentially a blue-red-and-yellow cash cow/Boy Scout that kicked some ass in fan-driven monthly comic books and the occasional expensive movie?
Whenever I was asked during an interview whether Superman still mattered “today,” I hesitated—how should I answer this?— but then always took the easy way out: of course he still matters, I said, even if characters like Batman and Spider-Man are currently more popular, and speak in more compelling ways to contemporary audiences—even so, for as long as we value kindness for its own sake, fair play, ingenuity, versatility, tolerance, altruism, and honesty, Superman’s pride of place in the pantheon of American mythic heroes is fully guaranteed. That’s what I said, every time. In so many words. Then I’d hang up the phone feeling not only like an unpaid shill for Warner Brothers but like the world’s most clueless cornball. And a total bullshitter. “As long as we value kindness for its own sake.” Oh, please.
2
Weeks later that summer, after the interviews ended, the newspaper stories ran, the taped radio programs were broadcast, and Superman Returns opened to generally mediocre reviews (I didn’t see it myself till the following September; I thought it was okay; fundamentally dumb, but okay), I was living on a small island off the coast of northern Maine. I’d gone to an artists colony there to work on a novel, a manuscript I’d put aside two and a half years earlier to write It’s Superman! It felt good to be finished with the Man of Steel.
One morning I volunteered to help with the laundry and grocery shopping on the mainland. Several of us—writers, musicians, painters, and sculptors — drove from Jonesport to Machias, and between waiting for the wash to be done at the laundromat and then heading off to the supermarket, I had an hour to kill, so I wandered around town, found a thrift store called the Bag O’ Rags, and ended up pawing through racks and cartons of sport coats, skinny ties, and T-shirts imprinted with pictures of bright-red lobsters and the names of fundamentalist summer camps. On my way out, I checked the secondhand books. Jammed in with the Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and James Patterson novels, I found a dogeared and well-thumbed copy of The Death of Superman, a trade paperback that collected eleven comic books originally published in late 1992 and early 1993. The Death of Superman. For crying out loud, I’d forgotten all about that.
During the final stretch of the Clinton/Bush/Perot presidential campaign, rumors found their way into the media that DC Comics intended to kill off their flagship character and cancel publication of all four Superman titles. Front page of New York Newsday, a spread in P
eople magazine: “Is This Truly the End for the Man of Steel?” Suddenly Superman’s impending demise (DC at first denied it, then teased the whole thing along, then confirmed it) was something everyone, overnight, knew about.
The collected Death of Superman cost me a dime at the thrift store. Ask me why I bought it and I couldn’t tell you—for one thing, I already owned a copy in much better condition back home in Virginia; for another, I’d thought I was done with Superman. Whatever. I purchased it and stuck it in with a bagful of T-shirts that cost a quarter, and left.
That evening, instead of writing fiction, which I’d intended, I pulled out the trade paperback and started reading. The credits list four writers, four pencilers, five inkers, four letterers, two colorists and two editors. And this: “Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.”
Virtually the entire 150-plus pages is devoted to a pitched battle, a fistfight-to-the-mutual death, between Superman and an unstoppable nonverbal alien predator called Doomsday (ashgray skin, tattered green pants and seven-league boots, multiple bony protrusions). An astonishing amount of real estate ends up smashed to smithereens. It’s all standard comic book roughhousing, except that on the final page, comprising a single, rubble-strewn panel, a battered, bloodied Superman lies dead (we’re told in the boxed caption) as Lois Lane swoons with grief and Jimmy Olsen records the historic moment with his 35mm single-lens reflex camera.
That image originally appeared on the last page of Superman number 75, published in mid-November 1992, just weeks after Bill Clinton’s election.1 With the presidential campaign over, the news media, tiring quickly of Socks, the president-elect’s cat, had seized upon Superman’s passing, paying him the kind of lavish obsequies (it’s the end of an era/the world will not see his kind again) ordinarily reserved for ancient movie actors, comedians, singers, ballplayers, or politicians who have been out of the public eye for what seemed like centuries.