What Happened to our Superheroes? / Michael French

What Happened to our Superheroes?

Michael French

Why has the entertainment industry systematically taken away all of our superheroes and replaced them with jaded, amoral anti-heroes?

What’s the goal? What’s the driving force behind it? I know the knee-jerk answer is “money,” but I’m hard-pressed to believe that the superhero industry could make more money by making superheroes less super.

As we’ve watched people who don’t understand or appreciate Superman, Batman, the entire DC pantheon and now, sadly, Spider-Man, relaunch these characters as anti-heroes with no legitimate creative motivation, what we have also been witnessing is the burning of a bridge between the generations.

When I was little, my grandfather and I both “knew” who Superman was, and when we discussed him, we were both talking about a guy with a red cape, red trunks and a big “S” on his chest who came from Krypton and was raised in Kansas. Some of the smaller details had changed between the 1930s and the early 1980s, but the core of the character was as pure as day one.

Similarly, my mother and I both knew the same Spider-Man. She had seen the 1967 cartoon series and I would see that and the Amazing Friends show, and in both I saw the same Spider-Man. That “same Spider-Man” was also there in the 1990s animated series.

If the changes to DC and Marvel are able to stick it out even only a few years, that generational bridge will be gone forever—and that was one of the most valuable byproducts of superheroes and comic books—they created common ground between youth and the generations of yesteryear.

If money is truly driving these “creative” changes, then the quest for profit has finally thrown decency and tradition within children’s entertainment to the wind as well. What angers me the most is the fact that no overseeing authority, or even parents’ groups for that matter, seem to care. In mentioning parents’ groups, let me be clear on a specific point—I mention them because they are the most sensitive “canary in the coal mine’ when it comes to mass media, not because I advocate censorship.

So I posit this: Spider-Man is now a bonafide villain masquerading as the wall-crawling hero. Yet the parents’ groups are silent.

What if Mattel took Barbie and “reinvented” her as a former Vegas escort trying to lead a normal life? What if Ken was reimagined as a former adult film star?

Sure, it’s edgy and more sophisticated and it would get the media’s attention. But would parents’ groups remain silent? I bet they’d be up in arms. So why then has the population at large allowed equally important children’s characters to be bastardized in this way?

Is it gender bias? Is it simply a lack of awareness? Have the contents of comic books fallen off parents’ radars? That’s a scary thought, hence the reason I wonder where the parents’-group rage has gone—not because I side with them railing irrationally against stuff like they often do, but because their lack of presence signals an absence of children in the readership of comics, which means a core pie slice of the traditional comics audience has gone missing for the first time in the history of the medium. Not a good sign….

Recently, Melinda and I were in a curio shop and we came across a set of superhero drinking glasses (both Marvel and DC). These were new make, 2012 copyright merchandise. Each of them depicted a single hero and, to a glass, all of them were the classic versions of the heroes we love. Batman was the Batman of Neal Adams. Superman was something from the same era (possibly Garcia-Lopez). Hal Jordan was the Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman looked like she came off the Kenner Super Powers action figure card from 1985.

There was also a Spider-Man glass, and the depiction said “The Amazing Spider-Man” and had that understated Romita artwork from the early 1980s that hearkened the original Ditko design—none of the MacFarlane or Bagley artwork or any of the recent stuff.

In light of all the relaunches and reinventions, I find this interesting—very, very interesting: that the merchandisers who license the rights to these characters from DC and Marvel are choosing to market the versions of the characters that are true to history, true to the universal definitions of these superheroes.

Even Lego has used the classic designs for their recent DC and Marvel toys.

Why then can the comic-book writers not see that superheroes need to remain super and need to remain heroes? We don’t pick up comics to read about jaded, troubled average people. We want to read about someone who has the courage to stand up above the avarice and greed and violence of human slime and do the hard thing, the brave thing and the morally right thing—even if he or she is risking life and limb to do it.

I don't want to relate 100% to a superhero. I want a superhero to inspire me to greatness—to compel me to fight for something larger than myself.

As I look down on these current trends in comics, what I see with the increased violence and more graphic sexual situations are not brave creative choices, but truly cowardly, cop-out choices by untalented and uninspired people who should be writing instructions on condom wrappers instead of being privileged with the keys to the treasure chests of literary characters that have inspired almost a century of young minds.

There are enough crappy, villainous adults in our world. Even as kids, we knew only a small percentage who read comics took the messages and values depicted in them into their adulthood. We always wish more had not forgotten their heroes and tried to live like Superman and Batman and Spider-Man.

Before you knee-jerk and think I’m wanting a return to the Comics Code, stop and ponder this for a moment. The fact remains that, code or no code, the comics today are not of the same creative or writing quality as the comics of the past. My position has little to nothing to do with the CCA, nor do I advocate censorship of comics. What I advocate for is writers actually remaining true to the characters they write for and preserving the dignity of the medium.

Just because the CCA has been lifted doesn’t mean we have to throw class out the window with it. With or without the CCA, the comic writers of today seem unable to write quality stories. All they know is depravity, and they are applying it to characters that used to have class. Keep in mind, the Batman and Superman of the Golden Age had no CCA and they were still true to form with excellent writing behind them. Comics used to be like Pixar films today: both adults and children could enjoy them, but for different reasons. As a result, superhero comics enjoyed a broad audience for many decades.

Now for the first time, there isn’t a chance any kid will grow up holding onto decent lessons taught by their heroes, because decent lessons are now missing from superhero comics. Personally, I hope as few children as possible pick up a contemporary comic book because I fear what kind of adults they will inspire....