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Myth and the Superhero Comic

Superhero comics borrow from many sources, not limited to previously-published comics. They borrow from genres like the western and the space opera; they use components of romance comics; in specific instances, they may borrow from particular books or movies that held some fascination for the writers who attempt to embed tributes in their stories.

This genre has borrowed particularly frequently from the substance of ancient mythologies, partially because such material compels the imagination (when used properly), and partially because such concepts mostly belong in the public domain, where no licensing fee need restrain comics creators from strip-mining ideas with impunity. We might consider, as a fringe benefit, that the broad, if sometimes rudimentary, acquaintance literate culture has with such content means that these materials will enjoy both a familiarity and a strangeness to most prospective readers.

Furthermore, superhero comics in some ways represent a descendant form to the adventure tales of ancient mythologies. Both tend to cater to the same human traits in consumers, although the delivery vehicle definitely differs and the principles of story follow different rules (the earlier material adhered to religious precepts, and modern superhero comics often pay the most homage to the canons of inherited continuity).

Writers can do much good and much bad in their usage of mythological elements in superhero comics. This appropriation has become a conceptual vector in its own right, involving various approaches, purposes, and, unfortunately, even a particular set of specific vices.

Where writers find something to use, they may find something to abuse. And, depending on the particular materials selected and the finesse with which talent applies such content, such borrowings can either enhance or trivialize the resulting comics.

A Handy Source of Goons

At the most primitive level, comics resort to mythological material in order to provide some ready-made heavies for someone to fight. Folklore of various cultures and various eras provides an impressive menagerie of zombies, vampires, ghouls, werewolves, giant animals, hybrid beasts, and altogether fanciful menaces. In addition, such monsters require much less generation of backstory to explain; concepts such as vampires, for instance, belong in a shared cultural lexicon such that almost any potential reader will already understand them without writers having to spend too much precious page space explaining the fundamental idea.

From very early times, comics have drawn enemies from folklore and mythology. For example, The Golden Age Captain Marvel, in one story, fought "the Argus," an ogre with eyes all over his head, roughly interpreted from the watchful and many-eyed guardian Argos from whom Hermes once stole sheep, as Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. fought other mythos-derived beastie-things. The logic of the monsters, rather than of Marvel's definition, suggested this encounter; though he has some connections to various corners of Near Eastern mythology, such roots did not and do not make such encounters inevitable in the same way that they might for more myth-drenched concepts like Wonder Woman. Indeed, he spent much more of his early adventures fighting robots and space aliens.

However, the temptation always exists to bring in a particularly interesting monster from myths and folk tales because such encounters provide a ready-made measure of the ability of heroes when contending against culturally-recognized menaces.

From the earliest superhero comics through the present, protagonists have found the prefabricated menace from the lore of ancient cultures a handy source of adversaries, and, despite subsequent, deeper uses of mythology in comics, we can expect the practice to continue.

Ready-Made Heroes

Marvel Comics managed to get considerable early mileage out of Lee and Kirby's re-interpretation of the Germanic god Thor, in spite of a rather dubious series of initial stories where the hero dealt with elements beyond his concept. How a Teutonic thunder-god had a particular connection to the conflicts of the Cold War, for instance, eludes me somewhat; Thor needs big monsters and opponents on the right scale, not squadrons of Breshnev-era Soviet soldiers, to fight.

This notwithstanding, Marvel's Silver Age diumvirate recreated Thor because, as Stan Lee tells it, they had hit a kind of conceptual block in the formulation of superheroes. Given the crowd that preceded Thor, we can note a certain discontinuity. We have a technological element in most of the characters before this point, with the science hero occurring in several examples (Ant-Man, Iron Man, and Mister Fantastic); we have accidents of technological mishap generating a number of others (Daredevil, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Human Torch, the Invisible Girl, the Thing); and accidents of birth, possibly related to Atomic Age concerns, generating yet another cluster (the X-Men).

Lee says they faced the question of what to do next, and, as he tells the story, he quipped that little remained to try at that point but a "Super-God," whatever that term might have meant when, or if, Lee actually said it prior to the development of Thor as a superheroic intellectual property.

In spite of the richness of the source material for particular gods and heroes of mythology, literalist interpretations often fail to inspire the imagination, and Kirby realized this in his visual design of the character. Compare Kirby's Thor-as-superhero to roughly contemporary interpretations in other superhero comics: Curt Swan depicted a conventional and mythologically-correct Thor in a Jimmy Olsen story, with the red hair, beard, and outfit appropriate to a Viking dress code. Swan's Thor lacked energy and Kirby's radiated it.

Settings and Stages

To return to the subject of the Silver Age Thor, that concept did not really take off until the hero began to move in settings derived from the original cosmos that the mythological Thor inhabited. This brings to light another component of what mythology can offer superhero comics. Especially in the post-Silver Age editorial model that mandates a shared universe, compelling new settings enjoy a particular value.

Thor, when clobbering Russian tanks with his hammer, seemed very much like a disposable costumed goober rather than the crown prince of a dynasty of gods. Once placed in Asgard, across the Rainbow Bridge, and moving among his fellows or striving against the monsters of places like Jotenheim, the character actually took off. Having established his roots in the Kirbyized version of Asgard, Thor's adventures here on earth took on a much more meaty aspect.

One might observe, with some definite truth, that mythologically-connected superheroes do not offer more than their secular brethren until they begin to bring their settings with them. In this we can see a recurring appeal that mythological heroes have held and will probably continue to hold as long as superhero comics exist.

One sees the high points of mythologically-themed characters in just those periods where writers lay down the groundwork setting them in relationship to the environment(s) that inspired them; thus, many readers view as the essential Thor stories during Kirby's period, when his fanciful Asgardian setting gelled, and many readers view as the essential Wonder Woman stories those when George Perez firmly welded the concept back to its Greek-mythology sources.

Attachments for Characters

Some characters, such as Wonder Woman, originate in a myth-derived context and therefore this mythological attribute remains central to their concept, whether all interpretations of the character over its life choose to rely on this source material or not.

In other cases, characters connect to but do not originate in mythological contexts. For instance, the Golden Age Captain Marvel drew his power from an odd collection of Roman deities, one doomed Greek hero and one king of Greater Israel, possibly because their first initials composed an acronym for the name he speaks to transform from Billy Baton.

Had Steven Grant's Manhunter from 1994 gone very far, one could have noted the development of that character's connection to the Great Hunt of Celtic mythology. This connection, never inherent to a badly-costumed superhero who appeared in the context of a comic that attempted to reproduce an Image Comics-type visual style, nonetheless gave depth to the character.

In creating such relationships to mythology, writers sometimes risk a kind of genre-incompatibility. For instance, in the Starlin era of Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel, Jim Starlin created a culture of advanced technology called the Titans, and, later in the sequence, defined these as descendants of the defeated titans of Greek mythology. This connection, however, did not work particularly well; instead of adding depth to the character Mentor, revealed as a sibling of Zeus himself, this interrelationship made Mentor appear rather silly and out-of-place.

Sometimes the connections work, and sometimes they don't. The delivery often determines this, though occasional concepts pre-doom themselves by attempting incompatible grafting too late in the development of an idea.

Themes and Meanings

Comics, in my opinion, get the most from mythological borrowings when they go beyond the characters and settings, however much they choose to use them, and strike straight for the meaning of the myths. For example, Promethea, sometimes indirectly through Jung, deals in the themes of the mythological knowledge-bearers such as the eponymous Prometheus and analogous figures like Thoth.

While not all comics professionals have a background in comparative mythology (obviously a love for comics rather than the works of Joseph Campbell, Thomas Frazier, or Robert Graves got them in the business in the first place), those who do can mine this material for the pieces that resonate most eloquently with the goals of a storyteller.

As far as comics that treat in mythological themes and meanings go, I'd have to grant some of the highest marks to Barr and Bolland's Camelot 3000, because it managed to hit so many bases in one work. It retained the essential themes of betrayal, redemption, and the sacrifice of a savior-king that define the Arthurian myths, yet took these into an altogether different context and only indirectly repeated the original events that framed the source material.

Dulling through Overuse

Some themes, however, become blunted. A small number of bad interpretations or a larger number of indifferent or even good ones can take the edge off a borrowed mythological idea after it appears enough times in print. For instance, the eschatology of mythical cycles or of living religions has appeared too many times over the last three decades in comics to have much impact any more.

Within the pages of Marvel's Thor, as one example, various writers have explored the Ragnarok theme to the point that future scribes on that book would do well to avoid it altogether, or at least until enough time has passed that existing long-term readers do not recall the last abortive End-of-All-Things that appeared in the book.

Some of this wear and tear happens because the appropriated concept so strongly contains an element that writers find it difficult to avoid. Since many of the examples discussed here deal with Marvel Comics' usage of the Kirby-interpreted Norse myths, we might consider the elements of doom that overhang that set of stories. At some point in the cycle, Ragnarok would occur, ending all things, and the children of one of the gods (probably Thor) would play an Adam and Eve role in repopulating both the divine and the material world.

Marvel does not suffer from this overusage problem by itself. On DC's side of the aisle, Wonder Woman for years labored under limitations imposed by the notion of Amazons as a separate culture and race which had strict rules about how they interact with males. As Superman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, and Green Lantern had silly weaknesses (magic, Kryptonite, and variously-colored solar radiations; fire; separation from water; the color yellow), so too did Wonder Woman enjoy a limitation from her early days. She lost her powers if bound or imprisoned by a male, and (evidently) the Amazons collectively would suffer similar depowerment if a male set foot on their island. To the point of such digression in detail, though, DC wore out the concept of Amazonian vulnerability, and did not include it in all subsequent reinterpretations of the character, because frequent abuses had made it trite and annoying.

In a general sense, this argues for an interpretative, non-literal treatment of mythological elements. Otherwise, writers must face the problem of a Balder the Brave falling to an spike made of mistletoe every year or so. In a character's thirtieth year, the redundancy could invite readers to despair.

Mythological Overpopulations

The shared-universe model of comics offers some things that isolated-milieu interpretations don't. These include an inherent rational premise to have the various concepts interact on a shared stage. Unlike crossover comics, which frequently must contrive some ludicrous reason that (say) Batman and Captain America might meet to test their fighting ability against one another, the shared universe allows characters to meet anytime writers desire for the simple reason that they live in contiguous places.

For comics that draw from mythology, this creates both opportunities and problems.

For a story or two, one can find some novelty in the interaction of gods, heroes, and monsters drawn from different mythologies. A finite number of stories where Thor interacted with Greek / Roman concepts had some appeal. Or, when a particular pantheon grows tiresome from overuse, writers can then draw from another one. Thus, in the seventies some Thor stories involved him with the doings of the Egyptian serpent-god Set.

Ultimately, though, this results in too many characters from too many pantheons diluting the very concept of ancient deities. Marvel has done a few stories where a kind of United Nations of gods - a "United Pantheons," if you will - convene to meeting on how to confront some menace bigger than any of them. By this point, we have reached the silly; United Pantheons scenes, whether in Marvel's more traditionally mythological form or DC's more dubious Ganthet-Phantom Stranger-Izaiah (et cetera) asides from pieces like Kingdom Come - show an excellent reason to proceed with caution when appropriating mythological content in the first place.

On a logical level, perhaps we might say: "If all these gods can't handle something, we've got a real menace here." However, without a context to make these gods seem like something more than scowling and bearded men in unlikely outfits, all we have is a glorified PTA meeting - nothing particularly impressive, and certainly nothing that drives the imagination. By this late date, writers should expect readers to say something besides "Wow!" If my own reaction bears any resemblance to that of the Reader in the Street, we should expect such scenes to induce an "Oh, not another council-of-the-gods scene!"

Dubious Backpedaling

At one point, Stan Lee may have become concerned about possible objections to his use of mythology in superhero comics. As early as 1983, I recall hearing a more informed comics fan discussing the dubious merits of a theory he had heard - and attributed to Marvel - that Thor and company originated not in Asgard, despite what the comics said over and over again, but as space aliens from another planet. As the theory went, Lee had concocted this idea to have something to tell the effete if they objected to the possible corruption of minors through exposure to pagan religion.

I dismissed this whole notion as just a bit of fannish lore at the expense of the bogeyman of Christian fundamentalism, around which a number of urban myths tend to orbit (although at the time I lacked the lexicon to so label such ideas). However, the role of the Asgardians in pieces such as Earth X and its follow-up, Universe X, tells me that someone sometime did have just such an idea. In the latter two pieces, however, writers used the notion to build upon, rather than to break down, established comics material by positing that evolution ultimately pushes sentient life to a stage which transcends objective reality at all such that lower intelligences define such creatures. Thus, men create gods by imposing their preconceptions on such beings, who then take the forms of the gods in which men believe.

In spite of grafting some meat to the idea in later years, I would still have to designate it a lame rationalization, a piece of dubious apology, or, in more common usage, a cop-out. Such negative terms reflect the inherently concept-subversive aspect of such explanations; where gods and heroes and monsters from mythology enter superhero comics, they bring the most to the medium when the contexts that generated them retain some integrity. The polymorphous alien that has exactly the substance that human believers give it does not inspire the imagination like a lightning-wielding godling who crosses the Rainbow Bridge to come to the earth to protect mankind from other-worldly menaces.

Even so, note the seminal quality of mythology when used in the negative. When besieged editors attempt to deny the "reality" of their mythological characters, the concepts still generate ideas.

Exhaustion or Opportunity?

If someone had asked me, circa 1980, whether mythological content has a future in superhero comics, I would consider material where time and usage had ground big ideas down to little ones. Recent memory would point me particularly to Thor where one pseudo-Ragnarok had come and gone, and even the Ring cycle that provided source material for Wagnerian opera had passed through the pages of that book. I would consider the dubious interaction between Norse and Egyptian gods, or the Thor annual where Loki admitted to providing Odysseus with the idea for the Trojan horse and therefore enabled the murder of an entire thriving commercial city-state. And, looking at this material, I would have said, "Time to move on."

Doomsayers for specific types of comics - including the superhero genre in its entirety - like to claim that no room exists for originality because of anecdotal evidence in the form of many, many redundant tales over the years. Such evidence seems especially convincing in the absence of eloquent counter-examples.

However, despite all morbid prognostication, counter-examples still do appear. Promethea, for instance, with its combination of mythological concepts with elements from Gnosticism and subsequent esoterica, shows that the right writer or writers, with enough imagination and inspiration, can make material work even where years of formula output seem to have ground away anything worthwhile that had inspired the derivation in the first place.

As I see it, habits of thought on the part of writers and lack of the fresh perspective one can gain by spending time away from comics result in the deadening of material; and this deadness need not attach to the interpreted content, regardless of how many times someone has used it in some form over the years.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 247. Completed 01-APR-2001.