INTERREGNUM (iii): Comic Book Logic, Torn Costumes and Violence

Doc Savage is the most well known precursor to modern-day super-heroes, and several authors have already noticed the striking similarities between this Man of Bronze and Siegel & Schuster’s Man of Steel. In fact, Doc Savage stands in the unmarked frontier between pulp fiction and comic books, serving as the prototype to both Superman-like heroes and Batman-type action-detectives, as well as several other tropes. In his crime-fighting and adventurous career, Savage fought criminals, mad scientists and natural monsters, including dinosaurs, and had to survive firefights, crashing planes, sinking subs, fires, explosions, and everything else ‘Kenneth Robeson’ (mostly Lester Dent) could think of. As a result of such extreme adventures and near-misses, the tattered shirt of Doc Savage became a permanent fixture of the character in such diverse media as pulp covers, comic books, graphic novels and films, functioning as a signifier of extreme violence. By means of contrast, injuries were kept to a minimum, mostly never more than a broken lip or a bleeding nose. It was as if the damage suffered by his costume/clothes stood for the intensity of the violence he had to suffer through. Very much as it goes in cartoons (printed or animated) where a character (say Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck) after surviving an explosion, is shown with body blackened and clothes in tatters for a few seconds, before regaining his normal un-disheveled appearance. And such graphic practice was transmitted to comics from its very beginnings.

As I will explore in my next post (the last of the two-year-in-the-making introductory posts to this blog), the superhero costume is very much part and parcel of the hero’s identity and personal definition; something that shouldn’t need further explanation as through the years we’ve seen different characters assume the mantle of iconic super-heroes like Batman, Batgirl, Robin, Captain America, Black Panther and such, implying that besides the particular powers specific to each character, it truly is the costume that makes the hero. Even when, as is the case with Doc Savage, the costume is merely defined by tattered clothes, something equally valid when dealing with Savage’s own female version: his niece Pat Savage.

I’ll admit that what I’m about to posit needs a little more statistical confirmation, but I’ll advance it anyhow in the spirit of impressionistic empiricism: as Mulvey, Dworkin and McKinnon’s unsubstantiated assertions on female objectification and identification of sex with violence drove feminist and extreme-right reaction against female (and even male) exposed flesh, comic book creators started putting forth lame explanations for costumes not to get torn to shreds.

I guess one can set CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS as the representational turning point, with a bevy of costumes being torn as entire earths and heroes were swiped clean, culminating in the torn and bleeding Supergirl dying with her costume in tatters, a confluence of torn costume and injuries, and a vision not soon to be repeated. In his re-imaginings, Byrne would erase the smallest rip from Superman or Wonder Woman’s costumes, with ridiculous explanations of bodily auras that would protect the cloth in contact with the hero’s skin, and generating endless jokes about the incredible number of capes Superman had to replace.

However, as the successive torn capes made clear, even Byrne felt that the costume in tatters was the best way of representing the outcome of physical violence, short of representing the real outcome of violence itself. That is: broken teeth, black-and-blue pulped flesh, broken bones and lots of blood. And, in a way, that’s the way comics went under the neo-victorian code of representation. Intact costumes would demand and bring forth ever more excessive degrees of physical violence. Thus, we went from something like this: 

 

to things like these:

Of course, for the progressive politically-correct noisy minority, violence is always preferable to sex, blood to breasts, death or mutilation to pin-up poses, better to allow them to hypocritically rage over their filled-to-capacity refrigerators. And so, the blood for intact costumes mode of representation became dominant in the major publishers, and affected both male and female characters. Case in point, one of my first pre-adolescent objects of desire: Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers).

In the seventies, after she emerged from the shadow of Capitain Marvel, Carol Danvers became one of the most popular female superheroes, Marvel’s worthy response to DC’s more tame Supergirl (also a Danvers, and my first ever comic book crush), even if not to ür-Superheroine, Wonder Woman. Hailed as a feminist and progressive icon (something over which not all feminists are in agreement – what else is new?), she nonetheless figured in two cult-covers from her own magazine, where torn costumes are used as effective pointers to the level of menace facing Ms. Marvel (even if not at all faithful to the stories within).

Both covers substitute the torn costume for any bloody signs of violence, which could be confused with topic domestic violence, or battery and assault (and Odin knowns the sexual readings that radical progs, fed with Freudian-mush, already get out of the covers as they are). But, as I stated above, torn costumes had to go, to be replaced by more overtly violent graphics. Now the question is how to represent that level of violence when the one on the receiving end is a super-powered, practically indestructible, super-being, without letting it slide into cartoon caricature? And the answer is: not easily.

Let us consider MS. MARVEL #18-24 (2007-2008), a set of books that comprises the “Puppets” and “Monster and Marvel” story-arcs, both of them easy fodder to varied readings and interpretations.  However interesting as they are (and I intend to do a go-over around “Puppets” in the future), it is not the stories per se that I want to tackle now, but the graphic representation of violence, as it escalates towards a maximum of absurdness of which the creators seem not to be aware.

It begins in MS. MARVEL #18, when our heroine is hit point-blank with a grenade that literally explodes on her face without causing the smallest rip on her costume.

If one was to take that as a little bit absurd but still within the bounds of comic book logic, issue 20 brings a quick escalation of power-yield, as Carol once more comes out unscathed from what appears to be a multiple-megaton blast.

Needless to say, despite emerging from the blast amidst a maelstrom of raging fire, her costume remains equally unscathed.

Immediately in the same issue, Ms. Marvel’s quarters aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. light helicarrier are destroyed in another impressive explosion when hit by an alien missile.

And again, there seems not to be any amount of energy capable of damaging Carol’s costume:

But if you thought that impressive, by issue #21, Carol drops from the outer atmosphere of some alien world… in her pajamas… which miraculously come equally unscathed from the fall and the friction and the heat generated by both.

And there’s no way in hell that repeated references to the “blue stuff inside me” can explain the indestructibility of Carol’s clothes. And it doesn’t stop here, as the creators (writer Brian Reed and penciler Aaron Lopestri) go one over the top and in MISS MARVEL #24 don’t shy away from a good-old nuclear blast at close range in the plain vacuum of space:

It is a spectacular blast that sends the equally indestructible alien creature careening through space, gaining Ms. Marvel – and Earth – some well needed time.

Of course, once again, both Ms. Marvel and her unbelievably resilient costume survive unscathed, even adding another vertiginous fall through the atmosphere.

Both story arcs from which the images above were selected are told with verve, both literary and visual, and one comes out of them with a distinct impression that its authors are aware they are straining the good will of their readers in accepting that a mere piece of cloth could survive such rough handling; not only that, one senses they know their readers will swallow it whole, because not to do it would be politically incorrect. (Surely they wouldn’t believe their story was so brilliant one wouldn’t notice how synthetic fabrics can withstand nuclear explosions and temperatures as close to those of the sun as they can get.) Underlining these impressions, is the fact that in MS. MARVEL #21 the issue of Carol Danvers/Ms.Marvel’s identity is broached in a pertinent way, denying any exceptionality to Carol/Ms.Marvel’s costume:  “We’re the same person. I am Ms. Marvel. It’s just a costume”.

Now, one can argue that something in Ms. Marvel’s powers can keep her clothes intact; not only her uniform, but also her pajamas. That somehow, Carol’s invulnerability extends to whatever she’s wearing. But how could this happen?

True, in issue #23, Carol discovers that the alien Cru can “turn her powers off”. Certainly that could explain how the alien’s sting could penetrate through Carol’s costume and Carol’s flesh. Bu then how to explain this in MS. MARVEL #19?

Despite catfighting Tigra (no pun intended) for over two pages (ok, one’s a splash page) and then tackling Silverclaw for two more, Ms. Marvel comes away bleeding from her torn cheek, but with her costume absolutely pristine: again, with costume intact in order not to raise the ire of the righteous left, it is necessary to draw (pun intended) blood. (It is true that in the story, the scratches on Carol’s face are a contrivance used to subdue Ms.Marvel through a toxin in Tigra’s claws, but that does not explain how could the striped ex-Avenger break Ms.Marvel’s atomic-blast-proof skin.) 

 

I think I illustrated – although briefly , and without delving  too much on the details of both story arcs, resting on a more visual approach – how I think that the politically correct refraining from present the female characters in ways that could eroticize them through too much exposed flesh , or even equate too uncomfortably eroticism and violence (not that they are mutually exclusive, quite the contrary, but remember this is literature for children – some, quite sophisticated children, but children nonetheless) led to the need to represent more blood and bodily maiming to convey the same degree of danger and menace that yesteryear was conveyed by torn clothes.

So it is that we see Carol Danvers scratched and bleeding, with her back torn by the barbed tendril of Cru, blood running like gravy from her rendered flesh, but with costume proper and primly intact, surviving explosions and nuclear blasts. Carol’s costume in this pages seems like the huge elephant in the middle of the room, that everyone is pretending no to notice. And more than following comic book logic, it calls our attention for nothing as much as those old Disney comics: for kids, you know!

My "No Theory" of Comics: Comic Book Logic

I stated in my last post, that I bring no “theory” with which to read comic books. Obviously, as one might have guessed, that is not entirely true. No one can spend years reading all kinds of comic books, reading and writing superhero fanfiction, and not bring with him some amount of baggage as to how he reads comic books. However, the way I’ll explore my reading of comics in this blog has not the necessary gravitas to be held as a theory. Maybe even to refer to it as a method would be too pedantic. Let’s just call it a set of flexible postulates that guide the kind of questions my reading of comics usually faces. And how should we call this set of vague postulates? One might think of it as common sense, but in this murky days of intellectual post-modernism, even that could sound pedantic. So, let us just call it “comic book logic”. Said logic, at least for me, derives from three very simple premises:

1 – WHERE WAS SUPERMAN ON 9/11?

This was a question heard more than once after the cowardly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in that fateful year of 2001. It was, understandably a cry of frustration, maybe even an unfair indictment against the inadequacy of the modern American mythos embodied in comic book superheroes. And the concept to stress here is unfair.

Surely no one was expecting Superman or The Avengers to intervene and defeat the very real evils of terrorism, international politics, and pre-9/11 government inadequacy to deal with both. After all, it was not the first time that superheroes were called to intervene in deeply traumatic historical events. Both Superman and Captain America (among a plethora of other costumed heroes) fought alongside American GIs on the battlefronts of WWII. And yet, even in that early period of development of such a demigod as Superman, one must have had the notion that with the Kryptonian hero on the side of the Allies, the war would be over in less than a month. It would take less than that to pinpoint the exact localization of the OKH officers and Hitler himself with Superman X-Ray vision and super-speed, and neutralize each one of them (lethally or non-lethally) even inside the strongest bunker. No V-2 rocket would fly past Superman’s heat vision , super-blow and super-velocity.  What were the Axis’s chances then against the combined powers of Superman, Wonder Woman, The Justice Society, etc… (Come on, even the Commando Cubs were able to get into Hitler’s own bedroom on the cover of THRILLING COMICS #41, cover-dated April 1944, even if not on the interior story.)

No GI in the Pacific Front or on the fields of Europe, carrying a battered copy of ACTION COMICS rolled up on his duffel bag was expecting the red and blue marvel to come flying through the trees and start smashing German Panthers or blasting Japanese Zeros from the sky. This inherent impossibility – that goes beyond the as-yet-impossibility of good Science Fiction – must perforce define Comic Book Logic. And define the way we read comics. We accept their internal logic, even though we know every aspect of it, is impossible. We cannot ascribe to superheroes (with the possible exception of masked vigilantes like Batman and other un-super-powered characters) the degree of highly-improbable-yet-possible credibility one can ascribe, for instance to a Jack Bauer or a James Bond (that we can think of as believable characters in near-impossible circumstances). That is the same as saying, superhero comic books are part of Fantasy, not Science Fiction (even when using SF’s tropes or modes).

And so, the first corollary must be: comic books are ruled by their own self-validating logic, a logic that cannot be challenged by facts extrinsic to their own internal consistency.   

2 – HOW CAN SHE/HE FIGHT IN THAT THING?

Or, Spandex Works Fine, Thanks.  There has been in recent times a recurrent ballyhoo about superheroes costumes. To be more honest, most of the ballyhoo confines itself to female superheroes costumes, and to how revealing they are of the female charms. Most of the criticism leveled to female costumes is mere cant from feminist crusaders that were never able to enjoy freedom of speech, aesthetic values, or mere biological constants. That is to say, most such criticism is political and ideological. Which would be very fine if they weren’t so blatantly masked as arguments concerning practicality. And what makes that smart-ass technique even more infuriating, is that the arguments presented are so stupid, that one cannot believe that their authors are not in the least aware of how intrinsically ridiculous they are.

The only true ‘practical’ problem with superheroes costumes arose when superheroes became the object of millions-of-dollars budgeted film adaptations. More precisely, during the pre-production of Bryan Singer’s seminal X-Men (2000). The garish comic book look of the mutants’s uniforms didn’t translate as well to film as the ones of Superman (1978-1984) or Batman (1989-1996). Singer wanted them to look real, as he was planning a less comic-bookely and more realistic film (how ironic that at the same time costumes were becoming more practical and real, everything else in superhero film adaptations was going down the drain of garish video-game CGI visuals and action). The film and its first sequel was a tremendous success, and the looks and textures of film-real costumes began to infiltrate comic-books. So far, so good. But “real-looking” does not necessarily mean “real-practical”. As a film like The Incredibles has laugh-out-loudly demonstrated, any costume with a cape is inherently impractical. And if practicality was of essence, every super-hero costume would tend to become a uniform, as every element (helmets, gloves, cybernetic-armor, flying shields, whatever) conferring a modicum of advantage would be adopted by other caped-crusaders. Fortunately, that is not the case. Capes work as symbols with long traditions. And so do garish uniforms, which, until recently, had a totemic quality relating to the origin-story of each character. Superhero costumes are not meant to be practical, they are meant to be symbolic.

And yet, it is frequent to find such incredible diatribes like this one from Newsarama, that merits to be quoted for sheer stupidity. Considering the then upcoming reformulating of DC’s Starfire’s costume, wrote George Marston and Lan Pitts:

“For decades [Starfire] sported one of the comic book industry’s most infamously skimpy, at times gravity-defying, and downright impractical get-ups.”

One's attention is immediately called to the “at times gravity-defying” part, something that, judging by what they write later on, has something to do with Starfire’s cleavage. Well, one cannot help but note that Starfire has the power of flight – you cannot get much more gravity-defying than that! The relation of superheroes to gravity has never been subjected to Newton’s laws but exclusively to the “comic-book logic” I mentioned above.

Then we have the impractical “get-ups”, impracticality that Marston&Pitts seem to evaluate according to the “favors [the costume can do] in a real superhero-supervillain battle-to-save-the-known-universe dogfight”.  Again, one has but to read the long-line of TEEN TITANS comic-books to gain a strained jaw in pure awe concerning the vast energies blasting in any dogfight Koriander can be engaged in. For that kind of battle, for the kind of super-powers Starfire (come on, her simple moniker says all that needs to be said) can yield, in practical terms she could as well be fighting naked – and her opponents too – as there’s no armor that could sustain such damage. Except, in comic-book logic. And comic-book logic exempts superhero costumes (male and female) of any logical, practical or even psychological consideration (although in the diegesis, there can be any or all of them).
So, the second corollary is: superhero costumes are exclusively aesthetic or erotic in nature, and are not bound to constrictions of realism or practicality.

3 – COMIC BOOKS ARE SEXY

One would think that it needn’t to be said. But all the talk about costume practicality, can lead one to think that all erotic characteristics should be banned from comic books. Sad it already is that few overt erotic or sexual situations should occur in comic books, even when more and more adults are reading them. But to pretend to completely de-eroticize comics is tantamount to pretend that guns should be banned from crime comics (they’re not essential to the genre, but are part of the tradition). Both male and female super-heroes (and many of the super-villains) are soft caricatures of perfect morphology: exaggerated only so that natural characteristics are enhanced in an aesthetically attractive way. Male and female super-heroes are drawn as close to idealized perfection as can be managed by the talent of the inker. They are the modern Pantheon of new gods and goddesses. And that is undeniably one of the historically main reasons that attracted pre-teens and teens to comic books. Men larger than life, women sexier than sin. A power fantasy that allowed nerds and geeks to escape the bullying of jocks and assholes in general, gaining a putative revenge over them as they knew – like only nerds can know – that one day, they would get what was coming to them: just look at the way nerdy Peter Parker took care of such bullies as the Vulture, Rhino and über-teacher Doc Oc.

And one must not forget that to most young boys, in an age before the advent of the internet, when even under the counter was to high to be reached, the first glimpses of perfect female bodies they ever got, came through comic books. Not the fleeting blink-and-you’ll-miss-it images of movies or tv shows, but gorgeous perennial panels in garish-colored comic books, that you could appreciate longingly for as long as you liked. So yes, comics are sexy.   There’s always an erotic tension that arises from female (and male) bodies in action: and in superhero comics, that action goes always over the top. Any killjoy can cry his throat sour about torn costumes, and impossibly firm breasts peeking through the tears on the fabric (never the nipple, mind you) , but one must surely stand in awe as how resistant all those costumes are to the level of power and high energy those fights yield. If you ever got into a fisticuffs you know that no matter how brief it turns out to be, or how unprepared any of the combatants is, both will end up with shirt buttons missing, torn sweaters, or broken wristwatches. But you can throw a nuclear bomb on Supergirl or Power Girl and if their costumes get even a small rip, that rip will be artfully located in such a way not to be the least revealing (talk about practicality and realism in comics). But that is as well, as the forbidden fruit is ever more enticing. (As a male reader, I tend to talk of superheroines, but the same is surely true for female readers ogling Conan’s six-pack or Wolverines manly naked torso, sweaty from killing hundreds of ninjas; and it is curious as every twerp complains about Red Sonja going into combat in a chain mail bikini, but give a free path to Conan who does the same in leather breeches).

Further on, I’ll detail my own take on this imbecile list, as I believe there are some valid points to be made about its subject, points that Marston-Pitts go out of their way to ignore. But for now, let’s finish with this third corollary of comic book logic: super-hero comics are inherently sexy, as their heroes are idealized archetypes of physical perfection.

So these are the lines that will guide my appreciation of any superhero comic book I’ll happen to comment on. Obviously, I do not confine my reading to superhero comic books. So, take these lines as my manifest. This is what you’ll get if you stick around or just come by one in a while. And I hope you do.