Go, Read: Neil Gaiman on Superman

Neil Gaiman and Wired editor Adam Rogers are responsible for this essay, which cites the Alvin Schwartz book An Unlikely Prophet and the Jules Feiffer cartoon where Superman plunges into the tedium of civilian life, before repeating the gem from Feiffer's "Great Comic Book Heroes" essay on Superman that he represents the reversal of the secret identity trope -- Superman is pretending to be Clark Kent, either because he's a bastard (Feiffer's suggested motivation) or because he's mostly denied by virtue of birthright the great joys of a normal life (a more popular, romantic take).

The Feiffer cartoon is one of a handful of affecting Superman comics in my mind, like the Goodman Beaver comic pictured and the well-liked, mournful dream sequences of Alan Moore's hypnotic plant Superman annual, all of which make greater use than usual of the psychological mirror provided by the man who can do anything. I alway thought that on some level it must be pure death to write Superman comic books, on the same level but worse that it's hard to read them. Every element that's been refined about the modern superhero comic book works against what seem interesting about the character and his set-up. The art is no longer colorful blobs in motion that suggest the obscenity of a man leaping and throwing things out of our frame of reference; modern superhero soap opera demands that classic and age-old questions move forward rather than repeat and eventually be rectified in some manner (if only to be reset); the 14-year-old mindset demands rational explanations and limits for a character that works better in extremes (even absurdist extremes) and without restraint. Or maybe that's just me, I don't know.
 
posted 1:29 am PST | Permalink
 

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