Well, it looks like our rant against Ms. Marvel 2K7 has attracted some attention.
Your blushin’, blue-eyed host is certainly flattered, and thanks everyone who has stopped by the past few days to comment or wish us a happy birthday.
However, the time has come to put aside our anger and frustration regarding Marvel and DC. After all, comics are supposed to be fun, right?
A good way to regain perspective is to remind oneself that super-heroes are patently ridiculous. Now don’t get the Keeper wrong; nobody loves the spandex set more than your friend in the Fortress.
But - to get all Real World™ for a second - when you think about people going through the effort of wearing outlandish skin-tight clothes to punch out criminals, the premise is more than a little strange.
Watchmen, perhaps the most hallowed super-hero comic, acknowledged that fact by portraying its protagonists as deeply disturbed individuals.
Sadly, subsequent generations of creators considered such deconstruction “mature” and “sophisticated,” leading to buzzkill like the current Marvel Universe.
Long before Alan Moore penned his Hugo-winning opus, however, an even greater comics legend decided the inherent silliness of super-heroes made great fodder for jokes and set about gleefully demolishing - rather than deconstructing - the genre.
That creator was EC Comics’ Harvey Kurtzman, the brilliant writer/cartoonist who spearheaded Mad - for our money, still the most anarchic and subversive comic book ever published. It was truly “humor in a jugular vein.”
The first few issues parodied radio stalwarts like Dragnet and the Lone Ranger, as well the style of comics that made EC’s name - horror, science-fiction and crime.
In Mad #4, however, Kurtzman and artist Wally Wood (EC’s talent pool was truly staggering … ) turned their attention toward the first and most famous super-hero: Superman.
With ruthless precision, the two mocked every aspect of the Superman mythos (especially the Lois/Superman/Clark triangle) and recast the Last Son of Krypton as a self-aggrandizing dolt who couldn’t see past his own biceps.
(And apparently rented out his chest insignia to advertisers … )
The parody peaked as our hero confronted the one menace he truly couldn’t defeat - “Captain Marbles.”
(This story appeared after Fawcett abandoned its legal fight against DC Comics, a fact that may have been reflected in the scene where Cap is carted away in a carbon steel block.)
More than 50 years after the fact, “Superduperman!” remains a timely - and hilarious - reminder that super-heroes shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Although many at the Big Two are less than comfortable acknowledging this fact, glimmers of Kurtzman’s subversiveness can still be found in mainstream comics.
Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen’s Nextwave: Agents of HATE combined the awe-inspiring imagination of Jack Kirby (a creator who never feared the ridiculous) with Kurtzman’s knowing wink at the genre’s absurdity.
Of course, the series was rejected by fanpersons who reject any notion that their hobby isn’t serious stuff. For the Keeper, however, it’s the acknowledgement - and transcendence - of the ridiculous that makes super-heroes a unique American art form.
It’s also why we admire books like Watchmen, but hold genuine affection for Mad.
