"Good takes the gold. Evil gets the silver at the most." - Websnark
Or... Expectations, Characterizations, Icons and Superheroes.

As a full-blown nerd, I spend a lot of time thinking about things that other people never think about in their entire lives. This is especially true of comics. As I am writing a comic and read a lot of webcomics, I think pretty in-depth about their construction and storytelling. But usually, I think very little about superheroes, as I tend not to read those books (Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns nonwithstanding). However, after watching Iron Man a few weekends ago, I had a rather impassioned argument with Drew about superhero comics and their advantages or lack thereof. Unfortunately, it was 3 AM and so the conversation degenerated into us yelling the same sentences at each other over and over again by the end.

The next morning, I actually had a clear head and was able to think much more logically about the conversation. I realized that we were both making very different points, which didn't necessarily contradict each other. The problem was that we were using the same vocabulary to describe our two different points and so misunderstanding the other person's argument. Considering both of the sides, I came up with a thesis about storytelling in comic books that I think deftly summarizes both of our points: Superhero comic books create wonderful icons, but poor characters. The problem that arose in our argument was that we were conflating those two very different ideas.

To me, icons are simpler than characters. Icons represent something that can be summarized in only a few words or phrases, whether it is responsibility (Spiderman), vengence (Batman, Punisher), overcoming prejudice (X-Men), or pure good (Superman). They have only a few defining characteristics, but those are always constants. Peter Parker will always be a sarcastic nerd. Superman will never kill someone in cold blood. Wolverine is angry and impulsive. As a result of this combination of representation and simple characteristics, it is easy to identify with an icon. Everyone understands the things they stand for, even if we will never have our parents killed or be a mutant. Weirdly, icons' universal appeal also means that everyone can then cast their own aspirations and dreams on them. As a result, icons become something bigger than a character alone. They become embedded in people's own perceptions of themselves and society's perception of itself. Icons are inherantly immortal - even if the character dies off, they will live on in people's memories. And icons don't even have to be fictional for this to be true. After all, Uncle Sam was a real person, and the idea of Uncle Sam certainly didn't disappear with his death.

However, icons simply lack the one thing that defines a character: a complex "inner life." Characters, like real people, have their personality and choices influenced by everything that has ever happened to them. They have fears, dreams, and conflicts, even when those are not explicitly expressed. As a result, their life history is essential to their being. If that background is changed - or they find out it is different than they believed - their entire character changes. This is why amnesia is so frightening to people - losing your memories erases who you are. (Similarly, it is why the slow discovery of Cloud's true history in FFXII is so affecting. Cloud definitely changes when he finds out he's not who he thought he was.) You become someone else without your history. Correspondingly, characters evolve and progress as a story does. Everything that occurs in a story influences how they act later. That is why sometimes writers say that their characters are the ones writing the story, not them. I've definitely had times when I've written something and then gone back and changed it because "Tabitha wouldn't do that!" It is also why stories usually suck that have flat, overly-simplistic characters. Because of this complexity and mortality, death deeply affects characters. Even in the rare circumstances where there is a chance of them coming back from death, it irrevokably affects them. They become someone else through near-dying or death. Although extreme, Gandalf's appearance after dying is a perfect example of this. Oddly, Gandalf actually becomes more of an icon after resurrection. All of his quirks are gone, replaced by the Unquestionable Good. (Also, Tolkein really liked icons and iconography.)

Drew actually reinforced this contrast in my head with an e-mail he sent me shortly after our conversation. In it, he compared superheroes to sports teams. Specifically, he said, "Over time though, much as there are new and old Packer fans, there are new and old Spider-man fans. And that is where the emotional connection with the character exists. ... Much as you associate your favorite teams with other events in your life, you do the same with your favorite heroes. And when the team is doing poorly, you hope that it gets better. That said, you always want to see what happens next, good and bad. Overhauls don't always work out. ... But it's how the character (team) stays relevant and viable." What really struck me was how much he saw a superhero as a symbol, rather than a person. That's a perspective that I would never have never previously thought of when thinking about a character in a novel or movie. I do associate certain books and movies with periods in my life, but mainly because of the deep emotional connection I felt with that character. I felt that book spoke something to me, at that time and place. That character mattered to be because of Who They Were. I cared about that character at an almost spiritual level, as if I was having a relationship with a real person. (Not that people don't do that with superheroes, but not in the context that Drew is talking about). Rather, Drew is seeing them as an entire football team. Football teams don't have inner lives, even if the people within them do. They have storylines, certainly, but their motivations are simplistic and easy-to-grasp (namely, to win), not complex in the same way as an individual's would be. And to a fan, the inner lives' of the players don't matter, because that's not the point of the football team. I'm sure Packers fans hope that Brent Favre has a nice life, but do they really care about his inner struggles? Not particularly. (Unless they result in entertaining behavior, but that's more about the spectacle of athletes than the fan's relationship with a team.) It's just a totally different perspective - not necessarily better or worse.

Now, if you like characters more than icons, the inherant structure of the superhero comic book industry means that they can never have good characterization. For one, the most popular comic books have been going on for 60 years. I think it is near impossible, if not actually impossible, to have a character grow and evolve in a way that makes both emotional and narrative sense for 60 years. Much less at the rapid pacing that superhero comic books have. If you actually followed a character in real-time, year by year, maybe it could work. It could show their entire life, from their childhood into retirement. But right now, years worth of events happen each real-time year and our good heroes aren't even pushing 40! (Or in the case of Spiderman, were recently reverted back to the ripe old age of 19!) As a result, superheroes keep going over the same ground and same dilemmas, and same conflicts over and over and over again. It is true that people often deal with the same problems year in and year out, but never exactly in the same way. Whereas it seems like superheros problems have never changed over time or really resolved themselves. There's no moving forward emotionally, no apparent change in "inner life."

This problem is further compounded by the number of writers and artists that work on each series. If too many cooks spoil the broth, too many writers make for bad characters. Again, having multiple writers might have the potential to be okay if they knew the previous work inside-out, or collaborated with the previous writers to guarantee some consistency. This I think is why television shows with multiple writers can work, such as The Wire. There's no question that whoever wrote the season one finale (which is excellent, by the way), even though it was his first episode, consulted the creator of the characters. You can tell from the dialogue that he had an innate sense of the tone and the feel and inner life of those characters. Plus, on TV, there are actors that make a character's expressions and tone of voice consistent, even when the writing may not be. However, most writers of superhero comics have the direct opposite approach when they write. They are not interested in continuing the creator or another person's version of the character. Instead, they want to make their individual mark on the character, make them who they want them to be, no matter what has come before. Which is understandable. I know with my characters, I hear their voices in my head, express their emotions on my face, and make their gestures with my hands as I write them. But when many, many, many different people have different views of the exact same character, it actually results in many different characters who all just happen to share a name and look. In the end, it's impossible to make any emotional sense of what has happened. So for a new writer, why not just make them do things out of character as long as they don't violate that core principle that they symbolize?

And that's not even speaking of retcons, which stands for retroactive continuity. For those of you who aren't comic book nerds, this is when a writer completely changes something in the characters' past to whatever they want. (There is an excellent essay on the varied kinds of retconning and their effectiveness or lack thereof at Websnark.) In some cases, it (almost) makes sense. For example, in the Ironman movie, they changed that Tony Stark was captured in Afghanistan rather than Vietnam. Okay. Since the movie was set in the current time period, this makes perfect sense. Besides, they are telling the story from the beginning in movies, so they can build upon that background from now on. In contrast, most of the time retconning in comic books is being done to a character's current backstory, changing something that already happened to them. What I hate, hate, hate about this is that a character's backstory and history is everything they have. Everything that has happened to them affects who they are and shapes their world and mental/emotional landscape in a specific way. By changing that backstory, it should change the emotional landscape of the individual. Sometimes providing a new perspective on an existing backstory can work - it can make a character whose actions didn't make sense or wasn't sympathetic, now make more sense or be more sympathetic. But most of the time, it's a major change that's done strictly because the writer wants to bring back an old girlfriend (he really was still in love!), didn't like that their favorite character had been killed off three years earlier (they were really being held in cryogenisis), or whatever illogical, poorly-thought-out plot wankiness they wish to engage in. For example, in the aforementioned retcon with Spiderman, the writer decided that Peter Parker and Mary Jane's marriage never occurred and that Spiderman was going to be 19 again - because he wanted him to be a swinging single! What?!? (Again, Websnark takes the cake for having an excellent discussion of this storyline. Interestingly, one of the commenters makes the same superhero/sports team analogy.)

Now, you might ask why this creative laziness makes me so angry. It's just comics, right? But as a writer, I believe that characters and readers deserve better. Even though my characters really only exist in my head (and other people's once they read my comic), they deserve to be able to act out their lives in the ways that make sense to who they are. As a result, they have an emotional weight to them, which is what readers deserve for the time put into their reading of the book. (As for the 'it's just comics' argument....it's an art form, not just a genre, thankyouverymuch.) And this is why I simply can't read superhero comics continually. Sure, I read individual storylines or individual books. I believe characterization can and does occur in individual chunks. For example, Batman in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is unquestionably a character who changes and evolves throughout the story. Neil Gaiman's versions of the Marvel characters in 1602are also characters. And both are very good stories. But in the long run, the characterization is just too all-over-the-place for me to really engage with a superhero over the course of many, many issues and years. When I read, I need to feel that relational connection, that in-your-head feeling that you just can't get with an icon.

Fortunately, this is just my personal quirk. Because icons are important, and perhaps even essential, in our society. There's a reason superheros are so incredibly popular, and not just because they beat up bad guys. We need mythical heroes. We always have. The Greek gods are the prime example of mythical heroes - they each stood for something, had a simplicity to them that most of the people in the stories didn't. Later on, in American history, came George Washington and Davy Crocket. Real people, yes, but people whose actual inner lives and doubts get lost in childhood stories and simplistic historical retellings. And this is where I initially didn't get what Drew was talking about. I didn't understand why he was insistent on saying, "You cannot kill Superman! You just can't!" I thought he meant that the comic book industry would fall without superheroes, which seemed silly to me. But in reality, that part of it was only part of the much bigger point he was making. He was saying that these characters matter in our society. They are our heroes and our villans and the stuff that culture is made of. They are what generations bond over. As he said, a Dad may pass on a Spiderman comic book to his son, regardless of what has happened to the character in the past. They have a role that connects real-life people together, that we can look to as a barometer of culture, and that allows us some kind of strange common language.

Thankfully, these days I have the luxury of interacting with these superheroes, as both icons and sometimes characters, without having to follow them forever and ever. They have become so entrenched in our society that you don't have to read them monthly to know about them, to be familiar with their adventures and exploits. I'll stick with my characters and storytelling in the long run, but it's nice to know those icons are there. And I'll continue to welcome their superpowered presence on my bookshelf when good writers choose to tell their characters' tales.