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Superman, Satire, and Immortality

One can sometimes recognize the penetration of a cultural icon by the degree to which jokes made at its expense require no further elaboration. And, in the case of Superman, this penetration renders more than one gag readily available and recognizable even outside the sometimes-closed brotherhood of comics fans.

The overly literal and those inclined to humorous interpretation have, for decades, recognized the silly aspects of the Superman concept, though not always with the accompanying insight that a concept need not adhere strictly to known laws of causality to retain its aesthetic validity. In some ways, the beauty of the concept remains indistinguishable from some of the traits that invite the most satire.

By definition, one could expect parodies of Superman's logical failings to occur more frequently within the pages of humorous works. But by no means do genre constraints quarantine such treatment, the barbs having erupted among purportedly serious superhero comics as well.

The Contents of a Suit

That Superman should convincingly deceive the world about his identity simply by putting a suit on over his costume seems to have fueled a number of gags at his expense.

Turning to Wonder Wart-Hog, for instance, we note that the Hog of Steel concealed his identity by cramming his muscular bulk into a Philbert Desanex suit considerably smaller than himself. Unlike the bland blue Clark Kent suits, Wonder's Philbert suit included skin, hair, glasses, and, to some extent, personality; on at least one occasion, this suit also possessed independent volition and identity and managed to get itself snuffed by the mob, until a hapless, vacationing Wonder Wart-Hog found it at the end of his fishing line.

If we step some time into the future - some fifteen or so years ago by the current reckoning - we can note a similar gibe at the notion of a hypermuscular superhero's ability to conceal his identity via simple wardrobe option. Don Simpson's Megaton Man passed himself off as Trent Phloog, who, like Clark Kent (and, for that matter, Philbert Desanex) passed himself off as a reporter, but made even more pathetic attempts at concealment. Trent Phloog wore cowl and visor under his suit and hat, and, somehow, with rare exceptions, managed to elude suspicion.

The Contrived Vulnerabilities

Again resorting to Shelton's classic Wonder Wart-Hog strips, we note that some minds of fine sensibility note the silliness inherent in some of the barnacle-like encrustations of plot devices that ultimately came to serve as foundations of the Superman concept. We could rank among the silliest of these some of the weaknesses imposed upon the character in an attempt to compensate for granting the character too much power in the first place. This began in the form of a glowing green rock that could do Superman harm, said rock founding an entire dynasty of (eventually) eleven or so types of Kryptonite, including red, white, gold, blue, jewel, and maybe six green varieties, and, of course, magic.

The Wonder Wart-Hog premise generally took the nonsense that underlies the superhero concept and, rather than attempting to rationalize it away or quietly ignore it, used it as a power supply.

In one story, for example, Wonder Wart-Hog tries, and fails, to penetrate a building roof because someone made it out of a material that neutralizes his powers to pound through real estate; the Hog of Steel then listed such materials as steel, wood, and Portland cement.

Again, though, in the classic Secret Seven stories (where Wonder Wart-Hog brought in his own Justice League, a team consisting of Bat-Daddy, Spasticman, Stinkheap, and others), the wart-hog found himself helpless because, just as he and his companions attempt to escape a silly situation by flying away, he discovers that the bad guys planned the whole thing to happen on the one day of the year when gravity (for no particular reason) doubles, neutralizing everyone's ability to fly.

The Glasses Bit

One of the more biting snipes at the notion that a simple pair of glasses could conceal a man's identity came during the early issues of Walt Simonson's run on Thor. Early in that run, Simonson saw fit to dispose of the Don Blake alter ego for the character after previous Thor stories revealed that identity as an artificial construct imposed on Thor and not actually a separate, flesh-and-blood individual. Thor, having lost his key method of moving unnoticed among ordinary humanity, therefore turned to mortal peers for a creative solution to the problem.

Therefore, the normally more savvy Nick Fury clad Thor in civilian clothes and gave him the name "Sigurd Jarlson," in the evident notion that hanging a contrivedly Nordic moniker like that on an incognito Norse god would, somehow, lure the curious away from the real scent. However, having seen that Thor in civilian clothes looked a lot like Thor in civilian clothes, Fury decided a bit of accessorization could render this disguise altogether impermeable, and therefore he gave Thor a pair of glasses.

From here, though, Simonson proceeded to rub salt into the wound. Having completed this dubious disguise, Thor thereupon leaves the room to collide with someone named "Clark" in the hall. This "Clark" takes one look at Sigurd and doubts the evidence of his own eyesight, immediately considering the notion that the man with whom he just collided strongly resembled somebody - precisely the reaction which we might expect someone to have should they encounter Superman in his civilian guise.

But the gag kept on running, much like the omnipresent Duracell rabbit. For, though the occasional normal person might fail to recognize Thor's pathetic bit of self-concealment, when it really mattered, his disguise proved transparent; the Enchantress, for example, saw through it from the beginning and moved in on the hapless thunder god to begin one of her characteristic schemes of domination through seduction.

Humor and Saturation

Followers of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" might note that pieces on that show frequently relied upon the reference to the obscure lore of the overeducated in order to get a laugh. Pieces like a sequence where Karl Marx did poorly on a game show because he could only answer questions about soccer with socialist catch-phrases come to mind, as do bits where highbrow directors made idiots of themselves. Or we might remember the "Summarize Proust" competition. However, these pieces understood something about humor; the very incorporation of such matter in humor pieces made high-culture or intellectual concepts inherently ludicrous by imposing them on an inappropriate or unfamiliar context.

Such humor relies on the friction created by joining the familiar with the unfamiliar, such as television game shows and the content of graduate courses in academia. The familiar element, however, plays the driving role; and, through humor, one can analyze how far an idea has made itself an everyday component of a shared culture.

That the Superman concept can elicit humor - good natured or snide - without a great deal of preliminary explanation attests much to its having dug in deep into popular awareness and imagination. Indeed, one could identify the recognition-via-caricature as a sufficient, though not a necessary, property of a concept having an archetypical aspect. Once the entire culture recognizes an idea well enough to get the joke when someone makes fun of it, we can admit that the creation has made it. Once the first widespread parodies of Superman began to appear, Siegel and Shuster could recognize their own handiwork as having imprinted their imagination on posterity.

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Email the author at ouzomandias@mailexcite.com.

Column 254. Completed 25-May-2001.