Prehistory of the Superhero part 5: Print the Legend

by Alex Buchet

Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.

— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

Superheroes are an American invention, because America is the land of entrepreneurs.

— Life, a.k.a. Chaim Lazaros (2011)

In the first four chapters of this study, I have concentrated on Europe exclusively as a source for the ideas and tropes that would lead to the modern figure of the superhero. Yet few would contest that the latter is overwhelmingly an American phenomenon; why, then, my emphasis on the “old continent”?

Prehistory of the Superhero (part 4): Elementary, my dear Morlock

by Alex Buchet

Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls

“My mind,” he said, “rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world”– Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four

 

Prehistory of the Superhero (part 3): Verne, Villains, Vril

by Alex Buchet

“Professor,” the commander replied swiftly, “I’m not what you term a civilized man! I’ve severed all ties with society, for reasons that I alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its regulations, and I insist that you never invoke them in front of me!” — Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea

When it’s steam engine time, people steam engine. — Charles Fort

 

Prehistory of the Superhero (part 2): Vampires, Victorians, and Vendettas

by Alex Buchet

It happened that in the midst of the dissipations attendant upon a London winter, there appeared at the various parties of the leaders of the ton a nobleman, more remarkable for his singularities, than his rank. He gazed upon the mirth around him, as if he could not participate therein. Apparently, the light laughter of the fair only attracted his attention, that he might by a look quell it, and throw fear into those breasts where thoughtlessness reigned. Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object’s face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass.

—from The Vampyre: A Tale, by John William Polidori

One summer night in 1816, a group of friends gathered in the Villa Deodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. They then determined to write each a tale of horror.  Ironically, the two most renowned writers in the party– the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron — never completed their tasks; while the unknown Mary Shelley subsequently wrote the justly famous novel Frankenstein: or, the modern Prometheus (discussed in part1).

One other of the group, John William Polidori (1795-1821) produced another classic of horror fiction: The Vampyre: a Tale (1819). It had enormous success and influence, and contributed to another classic literary incarnation of the superman.

Prehistory of the Superhero (part 1): Waltzing with Frankenstein

by Alex Buchet

                                                      Manfred on the Jungfrau, by Ford Madox Brown

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “In any case, one can state that much of the so-called Nietzchean ‘superhumanity’ has as its origin and doctrinal model not Zarathustra but the Count of Monte-Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas.”

— Antonio Gramsci, Letteratura e vita nazionale, III, ‘Letteratura popolare”.

This quote  comes from Umberto Eco‘s introduction to the French translation of his 1978 book of essays, Il superuomo di massa. 

As Eco  elaborates:

 I found Gramsci’s idea seductive. That the cult of the superman with nationalist and Fascist roots be born, among other things, of a petty bourgeois frustration complex is well-known. Gramsci has shown clearly how this ideal of the superman could be born, in the nineteenth century, within a literature that saw itself as popular and democratic:

“The serial replaces (and at the same time favorises) the imagination of the man of the people, it is a veritable waking dream (…) long reveries on the idea of vengeance, of punishing the guilty for the ills they have inflicted (…) “

Thus, it was legitimate to wonder about the cult of the right-wing superman but also about the equivocal aspects of the nineteenth century’s humanitarian socialism. [tr:AB]

The French title of Eco’s collection is, aptly, De Superman au surhomme–  ‘From Superman to the superman’.

But what of the reverse — how did we go from the superman to Superman?

Oddity 2: Neal Adams

by Alex Buchet

Neal Adams (1941–      ) is one of the most famous and influential superhero cartoonists of all time; it thus comes as no surprise that, in the 1975 celebratory compendium The Art of Neal Adams, the cover shows a face-off between the superheroes of Marvel Comics (left) and DC Comics (right):

But who is that funny-animal in a cape playing the peacemaker between the two camps? Just a parody Adams dropped in to deflate the pretention of the set-up?

Also a cartoonist(2): Xavier Cugat

This is part of a series on people who, renowned for other accomplishments, have also been cartoonists– some professional, some amateur

Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Brue y Deulofeo (1900–1990), better known by his stage name Xavier Cugat, was the prime big-band maestro of Latin American music: rumba, mambo, cha-cha.

He was also a professional cartoonist and illustrator all his life.

“The human race, to which so many of my readers belong…”

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of those prodigious artistic polymaths the last two centuries brought forth. He was the author of 80 books, 200 short stories, over 4000 essays, and several plays; today he is chiefly remembered for his ‘Father Brown’ stories, still widely considered to be some of the greatest detective tales of all time, and his Christian apologetics; his novel The man who was Thursday is a masterpiece of fantasy, hailed by writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges to Neil Gaiman.

G.K.Chesterton

However, his original training was as an artist, at London’s prestigious Slade school; and though he shifted his ambition to writing, Chesterton continued to produce drawings for the rest of his life.

Chesterton was a large, imposing figure in his great overcoat and  floppy hat, a favorite target of caricaturists — the latter  including himself, as the next four drawings show:

Oddity 5: Jack Kirby

Pencils by Jack Kirby; inks, Mike Thibodeaux; colors, Craig Yoe. Copyright Walt Disney Company

The late, great cartoonist Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is chiefly remembered for his epic superhero  and awe-inspiring science fiction creations. But over his long career he dabbled in every known popular genre — often to surprising result.

What to make of this, for example?

Oddity 1: Albert Uderzo & Edgar P. Jacobs

by Alex Buchet

The Frenchman Albert Uderzo attained international fame as the cartoonist half of the team that produced one of the most successful comics characters of all time: Asterix the Gaul. Prior to drawing Asterix, however, Uderzo had spent some 15 years drawing other characters — most of whom are presented in this montage:

Wait a minute… up there in the right-hand corner…that blue-clad superhero looks suspiciously like an American character, Captain Marvel Jr., as published by Fawcett Comics in the U.S.A.

What gives?