Powerful Politics: Superman

My friend, Andy, is the editor and chief of a great little review website called the Comic Book Bin. I would write occasional articles for the site but the grind of weekly reviews on titles I don't feel passionate about can be a real slog. The site offered specialized columns as well but Andy himself already had the only one I was interested in, the political column. I hope most people are past the idea of comics as kid stuff by now. What started that way has grown into a market of fiction written for adult consumers with adult sensibilities.

However, like dinner party conversations, comics are usually careful to stay away from politics and religion. When these realms do intersect, they seem to do so in the most conservative and inoffensive way possible. A few years ago, DC did a mini-series called Decisions that was written by their most outspoken writers from both ends of the political spectrum. The idea was to define where the superheroes stood on political issues. The big dodge of the whole thing is that they wouldn't allow Superman to be pinned down one way or the other because everyone wants to think of him as representing their idea of America. Therefore, they stuck to all the non-shocking character revelations (Green Arrow is liberal? No shit).

Three icons of liberalism in one panel!

An idea has been gnawing at the base of my mind for a couple of months: comics are essentially conservative. I don't know if that is true or not but I would like to look at some examples both recent and in the past. This is the first part in a god-knows-how-long series about how various characters and storylines have reflected the political zeitgeist throughout the years.

Lots of people know the origin of the origin of Superman. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were Jewish kids, the children of immigrants. There have been all sorts of scholarly works written on Superman reflecting the immigrant experience, Superman as Moses and pretty much any facet of the lives of the creators of Superman have been read into the character himself. Something that Grant Morrison (a modern day Superman writer) likes to talk about is the Socialist origins of Superman. When he first started, he was a defender of the defenseless. Factory workers, abused wives, the poor, the destitute; these were the people Superman fought for. Greedy corporate interests and corrupt politicians were his foes.

Superman causes the housing crisis!

You have to remember, the Soviet Union was an ally (or at least the enemy of our enemy) of the U.S. before they became our arch-enemies. Before the Cold War, communism was openly discussed as a political alternative to capitalism in the U.S. Now, even socialism (the watered down version of communism) is considered a forbidden word in political discourse. There was nothing alarming or subversive about a superhero representing socialist ideas.

However, I would be willing to bet that, if you asked people these days what Superman represents, most would say conservatism. Let us look a little more at Superman's history to see where the turn came in.

As the comics code authority took hold in the 1950s, any sort of subtext was scrubbed from superhero comics in general. The most controversial thing they would stand for is obeying your parents and staying away from icky girls. This kind of neutered, silly view of Superman (and the entire industry as kids stuff) dominated until the 1980s. Artist Curt Swan became so associated with Superman, his rendition of the Man of Steel's face became the "official" way to draw Supes.

Official and boring...

The majority of Superman's history was spent as an iconic symbol for Truth, Justice and the American Way. Black and white morality, a refusal to kill, stories that revolved around playing elaborate jokes on Lois Lane and really goofy side-effects of Kryptonite became the hallmarks of the Superman mythos.

Oh, and his dickery.

In the mid-1980s, DC restarted their fictional universe. They wanted to lose the image of being "just for kids." Superman, over the years, had found himself as a best friend of Batman and caretaker of a menagerie of refugees from Krypton (Supergirl, Krypto the Super Dog, the Bottle City of Kandor, Beppo the Super Monkey, Streaky the Super Cat, Comet the Super Horse, etc.). DC did away with all that and brought Superman back to his essence...making him a kind of blank slate that a powerful writer could place his stamp on.

Did you think I was joking about the animals?

John Byrne, a very gifted artist who made his name drawing the X-Men for Marvel, was given the task of recreating Superman for the 80s. While I can't speak to his intentions, he seemed to be at least giving lip service to the socialist roots by transforming Superman's long-term archenemy, Lex Luthor, from a mad scientist into a Corporate Master of the Universe straight from the movie Wall Street. Luthor was now above the law, because he was wealthy. And that is a perfectly legitimate way to define a hero, through contrast with his villains but Byrne seemed to have a hard time filling in the personality traits of Superman himself. He was still a Kansas farm boy (although he had never been Superboy in this new telling) who believed in Truth, Justice and the American Way. Which is all just vague enough to leave your most iconic hero a bit of a cipher in the new, morally ambiguous world of 80s comics.

Where Byrne kind of (in my opinion) whiffed his chance to define Superman, Frank Miller stepped up and did it for him. Miller wrote one of the two defining graphic novels of the 1980s, the Dark Knight Returns (the other being Watchmen, of course). Although the Dark Knight Returns is mostly about Batman, his arch-enemy (or his antithesis) is set up as Superman rather than the Joker. Shown as a tool of Ronald Reagan, Superman in Miller's vision is so beholden to The American Way that he is a puppet of the government. He is a stooge with no mind of his own. Spoiler alert for an old comic but Batman kicks Superman's ass (but uses the fight as an excuse to fake his own death). I really think this marked the ascension of Batman as DC's #1 character and reduced Superman to #2 (prior to Dark Knight Returns I would have put them as equals).

And this became the only official way a Superman/Batman fight could go down.

Really, this was not so much a reimagining of Superman as the ultimate conclusion to the characterization of the 50s to the 80s. Miller is obviously no fan of Reagan and his rhetoric. Barred from putting any overt political commentary in comics for decades, Miller hit at the time when he was finally free to express the Nixon-engendered distrust of the government. Superman was painted as naive enough to obey his commander and chief no matter how corrupt the orders were.

This image kind of tainted the popularity of Superman for years. All sorts of gimmicks came up in the 1990s to try and break him free from the perception of being a lame tool of the status quo. After marrying him to Lois Lane, and gaining zero traction in the grim and gritty world of 90s comics, the powers that be kicked off a horrible trend in comics by killing him off and replacing him with darker, edgier versions of the character. None of these caught on either.

Say hello to...sigh...Cyborg Superman...

Various writers have tried since the 90s to put a new spin on the Man of Steel. Mark Waid made him a symbol for innocence and justice in his Kingdom Come series. Joe Kelly argued for his essential decency being his primary character trait in his Action Comics run. Mark Millar showed that Superman would have been just as big a tool under the communists in his alternate reality work, Red Son. I am going to credit Jeph Loeb with this next bit but I may be wrong. I know he wrote most of the stories in this arc. If Superman is too closely tied with the government (which most people don't trust) how do we make him an enemy of the government? Easy, make Lex Luthor the president.

I think a lot of writers were troubled by the outcome of the 2000 election and this was reflected in their work. While Marvel had people like Bendis writing a more multi-faceted approach to politics, DC just went ahead and made the president pure evil. No subtlety here. Superman's long-time friend, Pete Ross, becomes the vice-president as a way to kind of balance Luthor's villainy. However, whereas it would have been unheard of to have Superman fighting against the government of the U.S. in the 1960s, here he was labelled as a public enemy in the 2000s.

Granted, I don't think this rehabbed his image any. I can't help but feel conservatives had to be kind of offended that Luthor happened to be president at the same time as GW Bush. There was a storyline called Our Worlds at War about several alien invasions on the Earth. Luthor manipulates the situations to his own advantage. It is all pretty thinly veiled metaphor for how skeptics were looking at the conflicts in the middle east. Now that I think about it, fans of small government could just overlook the timing and see the Luthor administration as an indictment of the corruption inherent in the government.

But, I hadn't finished the crossword!

While a bit ham-handed I think the idea as an approach to Superman is fundamentally sound. He has god-like powers and could easily rule the planet. The inherent decency instilled in him from his red state parents gives him a strong moral center that he applies to a variety of increasingly complex dilemmas. He gave in to capital punishment once and then vowed to never take a life again. Once he becomes the authority figure, the ultimate judge of morality, he loses any interesting character tension. To set him against the powers that be is always more interesting than seeing him work for them. Now, he has another potential enemy to keep an eye on, the U.S. government.

Ultimately, the best statement about the character was made in one of his worst recent stories. In the Grounded storyline by John Michael Straczynski, Superman decides to walk across the U.S. to get back in touch with the common people. Along the way, he encounters a host of common problems (drug dealers, people with heart conditions, etc.) that are meant to humanize him. Instead, they illustrated how far the character has come since smacking around spousal abusers in the 40s. He is too powerful a character to get involved with micro-management of morality. He burns down a drug dealers stash house with the knowledge that another dealer will be in that neighborhood in a week. The storyline was meant to show that Superman can inspire normal people to stand up for themselves but, of course, they don't have the benefit of superpowers to help identify and destroy drug supplies.

In the final determination of whether or not Superman is conservative or liberal, I would have to cite a long-standing argument between Superman and Lex Luthor. Luthor believes that Superman represents a safety net for humanity. Why should anyone struggle to achieve or take risks when Superman exists as this unreachable standard or last minute savior? Growth comes through trying and failing to achieve so why should anyone try if they can't be Superman and how can anyone fail if he is there to catch them? Lex embodies the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and free market competition of conservative thought. If you put Superman in opposition to this way of thinking, then he has to say "I don't trust humans to achieve on their own, so I will help you tards along." No one would like him much then. But you can't have him agree with Luthor because then he would just retreat to the Fortress of Solitude and never help anyone with anything in the name of letting humans fend for themselves. Thanks to his parents, Superman has a healthy chunk of "with great power comes great responsibility" along with that black and white morality. He is in a unique position to help others and can't deny that. But by helping others, he is interfering with the fate of indigenous humans.

In writing this out, I have come to the conclusion that Superman kind of represents an idealized government. One that balances the power to make a difference with the ideas of personal achievement and responsibility. A centralized government can act in ways a collection of states cannot and to ignore the responsibilities that come with these powers would be irresponsible. On the other hand, to meddle too much in the destinies of the people would undermine the growth of the people. If Luthor is the conservative side of things, wanting Superman to fuck off so humanity can find its own way, then Brainiac or Zod are the opposites. They represent the elimination of free will, the intense meddling of an all-powerful government to manage every aspect of one's life.

The nanny state personified.

Wow, I had no idea these were going to be my conclusions but it seems I have led myself into believing that Superman represents the best of both parties. His enemies often represent the extremist views of either end of the political spectrum. He must act if it is in his power to help others, but he must not limit the freedoms of the people he protects. I'll be damned. No wonder he is such an enduring character. In a time when it seems like politics have to be all one way or the other (blue state and red state) I would like to think Superman moves so fast you can only see a blur of purple.

What do you think? Is Superman a godless commie or a capitalist pig? Both? Neither?

In the future, I will be looking at characters (like Batman, Captain America and X-Men) as well as storylines (the Civil War, Dark Reign and more).