Whenever a critic speaks of any popular work as possessing a “mythology”—a term often applied to serial, fictional narratives—the most common objection is that popular fiction is too “low”—as in, “created for the lowest common denominator”—to be regarded as myth. By contrast, archaic mythology is allied to “high” culture in terms of being associated with the foundations of literature and religion. Often those who don’t like applying myth-criticism to poplit haven’t studied myth as such. They just don’t like seeing a “low” form validated as something “high.”
However, though archaic myth as we have it takes complex forms, often it starts with humble ideas or impulses and elaborates their symbolic properties, rather than starting out as a complex conception. Long literary elaborations of myth — Homer’s Iliad, the Gilgamesh Epic—show evidence of having been compounded out of many simpler stories, more like “folktales” more than what we moderns deem to be “myths.”
For the first twenty years of American comic books, the majority of stories had the simple “beginning-middle-end” structure of folktales. On occasion this or that story might advance a richer complexity than the average, but the complexity was never maintained. For example, the Golden Age Green Lantern had a level of fantasy-symbolism comparative to what one might find in an old folktale. But once the character’s background was established, that Green Lantern’s serial adventures did not build on the symbolism within the fantasy, in the manner that I contend that mythic narratives did elaborate the subject matter of their folktale predecessors. Instead, that Green Lantern simply settled into a routine of fighting one criminal menace after another. Whether the villains were “super” or not, the same simple story-structure prevailed.
The early years of the Silver Age were not an immediate disavowal of this pattern. When DC Comics issued their refurbished versions of such characters as the Flash and Green Lantern, the heroes still fought assorted “done-in-one-story” menaces while the narratives remained as simple as possible. However, over time a progression was seen, in which Silver Age serial characters took on greater complexity of symbol and theme.
In modern days, the mythos of the Green Lantern comic has become one of the foundations of DC’s continuity, engaging with such myth-concepts as the beginnings of the universe. But as I perused the contents of DC’s first two “Showcase Presents” collections of Lantern reprints, it was evident that only after many years did the feature’s creators—largely though not exclusively writer John Broome and artist Gil Kane– begin to pursue greater symbolism of both concepts and characterizations.
Showcase #22 leads off with the story of how Earthman Hal Jordan is selected to join the power-ring-wielding cop-squad known as the Green Lanterns. The story possesses both the elegant simplicity and lurking inconsistencies of a pleasant wish-dream. Within a few years, however, certain inconsistencies were addressed in a “retcon” tale; certainly one of the first seen in American comics—a type of revision rarely if ever seen during the Golden Age. The issue’s other two short tales pit the new hero against, respectively, a group of spies and a garden-variety mad scientist named “Doctor Parris,” who is technically GL’s first super-villain, albeit his most forgettable. These two stories are more noteworthy for establishing a “romantic triangle” relationship between Hal Jordan, his gorgeous boss Carol Ferris, and Hal’s heroic alter ego—a triangle that looks to have been swiped from Superman, even though the GL feature took the idea in new directions.
Showcase #23 begins to explore more science-fictional themes. In the first tale, GL gets his first assignment from the Guardians who formed the corps, though he does not actually meet them at this point. The Guardians send GL to Venus, where a tribe of blue-skinned humanoids need protection from yellow pterodactyls—the first of many stories featuring the hero as a champion of (sometimes political) intervention. The second story gives GL his first costumed villain—the Invisible Destroyer, who looks like a Buck Rogers-like uniform with no head beneath its helmet. Broome’s concept for this one-shot villain—that he was created from the evil side of an eminent scientist’s personality—was fairly sophisticated, arguing that the Destroyer has no face because the “good part” of the scientist’s mind “refuses to acknowledge the Destroyer’s existence.” This roughly Freudian concept of disavowal would see use again in two other GL foes: Doctor Polaris and Star Sapphire.
The last Showcase outing, issue #24, follows the same pattern as #22: one battle against foreign spies, one battle against a creation of mad science. The latter story involves a creature “born in a test tube—and it died in a test tube,” as GL puts it, but both stories focus more energy on the romantic interplay of Hal and his hot-and-cold honey.
The first issue of Green Lantern’s book isn’t especially overwhelming. The cover-featured story pits the hero against another forgettable villain, the Puppet Master, while the lead story is essentially a reprise of the Venus tale from Showcase #23, though this time the hero saves some alien cavemen from a giant gorilla-man. The issue’s greatest significance is that it finally introduces the readers to the blue-skinned Guardians. The Guardians summon an “energy duplicate” of Hal to the planet Oa, while his body remains back on Earth. They ask Hal to retell the story of his origins (for the benefit of new readers, of course). Strangely, when the Guardians finish debriefing their new convert, and send back his “other self,” Hal-on-Earth remembers nothing of his encounter with his alien bosses. Another “disavowal” of an unacknowledged truth, perhaps?
GL #2 builds two new aspects of the mythology, one cosmic and one mundane. The first story introduces GL to the anti-matter dimensional universe of Qward, where society is oriented around principles of evil rather than good. In time Qward will assume the narrative status of a “hell” to counterpoint the righteous “heaven” of Oa’s Guardians. A Qwardian escapes to Earth hoping to live life by the principles of goodness, but though he dies, GL learns of an underclass of do-gooders in the anti-matter world. This is the first of several tales showing GL battling political tyrannies on the behalf of underdogs. The second story is insignificant in terms of the hero’s adversaries—a gang of Alaskan thieves—but significant in terms of adding a new character, the Eskimo sidekick Pieface, to the feature. Along with Carol Ferris, Pieface will remain the only other regular support-cast member during John Broome’s run on the title.
More mythology to come…
RSS feed for Gene Phillips
Interesting article, but I’m a little uncertain to the general thesis? Are you suggesting Superhero comics genuinely qualify as mythology (or ‘modern mythology’ as some have called them), or do they just share similar elements to what we call ‘mythology’ in terms of the heroic narrative structure, but are fundamentally different forms?
Is it enough to call anything with a complex evolving reality (grown not from a single author, but multiple authors) a ‘myth’? Because then certainly The Bold and the Beautiful, Neighbours, and other very long-running soap operas could be classed as mythologies.
Also, do you believe there is any credence to the notion that the commercial nature of these comics (the driving force behind any all story decisions) excludes them from the realm of self-shaping myth? For example, the first Thanksgiving began as a real event and grew into a mythic event as each generation subtly builds on the legend and shapes it until it no longer represents reality. That kind of organic mythology is how I suspect classical myths came to be, rather than anything resembling the constructed mythology within commercial comic books, so it seems to me that they don’t belong in the same class. Just riffing here, what is your opinion?
I wonder if a corporate-created mythology is especially appropriate for modern times, especially if it gets to a point where it governs itself or individual artists take charge of it; I think a lot of those Golden and Silver Age guys were kind of making it up as they went along.
Wasn’t the Santa Claus mythology somewhat created or propagated by corporations?
Corporate mythology like Santa Clause certainly counts, since although the modern image of santa was developed by certain corporations (Coca Cola from what I remember), the image isn’t owned by any particular company.
I’d argue that a mere story (no matter how complex it is, like superhero comics) can only become mythology once they’re removed from the control of one person or a small group of people, and instead become shaped by society at large. In that sense, superhero comics could never qualify, since although a huge number of writer/artists were involved in shaping and developing any of their properties, the final say comes down to a single corporate body, who have certainly kept a tight leash. On the other hand, Bram Stoker’s Vampire monsters and Romero’s Zombies have become mythologies since they’ve become public domain, nobody can strictly ‘control’ them anymore and the concept is free to blow in the wind.
Mladen,
I do think that all fiction– not just superhero works– can potentially assume the dimensions of mythology, though I prefer to speak of “fictional myths” to distinguish them from myths that more properly originated through the auspices of religion and folklore.
My take on early “organic mythology” is different from yours in that I believe it was still somewhat determined by the same sort of “popularity contests” that determine success in the world of commercial work. It’s true that we usually don’t know the names of the bards and ollaves who helped disseminate many of the stories, except for those who come very late in the tradition (Homer, maybe Firdausi). But for me the process is very comparable in that the audience ultimately decides that, say, Indra rather than Varuna excites their imaginations.
More on this later.
Mladen asked:
“Is it enough to call anything with a complex evolving reality (grown not from a single author, but multiple authors) a ‘myth’? Because then certainly The Bold and the Beautiful, Neighbours, and other very long-running soap operas could be classed as mythologies.”
They would only be myths (or “fictional myths”) if their content had a symbolic complexity akin to that of real myths.
“Also, do you believe there is any credence to the notion that the commercial nature of these comics (the driving force behind any all story decisions) excludes them from the realm of self-shaping myth?”
I don’t give it any credence. The idea of such an exclusion seems to have been most promulgated by Theodor Adorno, whose writings about pop culture are both blinkered and poorly researched. It’s become a popular trope, however, in that many people have absorbed the notion even without having read Adorno.
“That kind of organic mythology is how I suspect classical myths came to be, rather than anything resembling the constructed mythology within commercial comic books, so it seems to me that they don’t belong in the same class.”
That organic form might– emphasis on “might”– apply to folklore, in that those are tales being passed from one preliterate tribe/village to another. But in the case of the Big Myths that inform archaic religion, we’re talking about organized priesthoods shaping the stories. In some cases they may have simply elaborated folktales into religious forms, and in others they may have devised their own myths, whether to manipulate followers or to make intellectual sense of the world.
One more for Mladen:
“I’d argue that a mere story (no matter how complex it is, like superhero comics) can only become mythology once they’re removed from the control of one person or a small group of people, and instead become shaped by society at large. In that sense, superhero comics could never qualify, since although a huge number of writer/artists were involved in shaping and developing any of their properties, the final say comes down to a single corporate body, who have certainly kept a tight leash. On the other hand, Bram Stoker’s Vampire monsters and Romero’s Zombies have become mythologies since they’ve become public domain, nobody can strictly ‘control’ them anymore and the concept is free to blow in the wind.”
I can understand the temptation to believe that greater creativity flows when “the concept is free to blow in the wind.” However, I don’t observe that to be the case.
There may well be a tendency of corporations to keep a tight leash, but not all of them do so. For the first four years of the so-called Bronze Age, Marvel Comics had an amazing period of wild creativity, precisely because the editorial reins were loose in those days. It’s nearly impossible to imagine Steve Gerber’s talents flowering had he first worked under the auspices of Jim Shooter.
In addition, some creators do their best work under strict conditions, or in alliance with a strong co-creator or editor. Arguably John Broome was one of these. From what I can tell few of his independent prose works are well-remembered, but he seems to have found his creative metier under editor Julie Schwartz. He moved out of comic books close to the dawn of the Bronze Age, and never so far as I know attempted to work for Marvel. But if he had, his type of creativity would’ve been hugely out of step with the way Marvel did things then. Broome’s DC-buddy Gardner Fox tried to do so, and the results weren’t pleasant.
Again, as far as I’m concerned, one first has to look at the work itself and suss out whether it has levels of greater complexity, and only second suss out the process by which it was produced.
Thank you for the long and reasoned responses!
“They would only be myths (or “fictional myths”) if their content had a symbolic complexity akin to that of real myths.”
Could you please elaborate on this?
Is this something we apply in reading of comics because the characterisation of (early comics) is so one-dimensional that it becomes tempting to read the characters as symbolic archetypes? In which case it would make as much sense to read those Superhero comics as the part of a fabric of a larger fictional tradition (or mythology), which would include pulps, radio drama and adventure serials, from which the characters in comics are strongly derived?
As for whether soap-opera fits the bill… I haven’t seen Bold and the Beautiful in a while, but I seem to recall, the characters involved in any one plotline would fit the key symbolic roles, usually excluding the larger cast if their symbolic roles were doubled up. Antagonist matriarch, antagonist patriarch (usually at odds with one another), innocent corrupted, heroic defender (male or female), etc. Is heroic violence a requirement (and there’s a fair chunk of that in soap opera too)? I’m sure I’m missing the larger part of your intent in your response though?
Sorry not to get back to this thread, I keep forgetting to check the older ones.
I don’t think that my particular definition of myth, that is in terms of symbolic complexity, is commensurable with a one-dimensional level of characterization. I recently read Ibsen’s ROSMERSHOLM, and I consider that it’s very well characterized, if a little stilted from modern points of view. What Ibsen and John Broome would have in common is not the level of characterization– Ibsen is obviously superior in that category to Broome– but their ability to use symbols to express a wide level of meanings, either in accordance with, or in spite of, the depth of characterization.
For instance, many comics writers would have been content to give Carol Ferris a simple “Jekyll and Hyde” persona, something that would briefly complicate the hero’s life for an episode or two. But I would say that Broome did more than this: that he builds the gender-cultural conflicts between Hal Jordan and Carol throughout the series and that they culminate in this Amazon-like double-identity of Star Sapphire. This more-than-average complexity compares with, say, how Ibsen uses characters in ROSMERSHOLM to depict larger-than-life attitudes in Scandinavian culture.
A soap opera could have the essential ingredients, but not succeed in articulating them in this manner.
A little more elaboration:
Remember one of the bases of the quality I find mythic is stated above:
‘However, though archaic myth as we have it takes complex forms, often it starts with humble ideas or impulses and elaborates their symbolic properties, rather than starting out as a complex conception. Long literary elaborations of myth — Homer’s Iliad, the Gilgamesh Epic—show evidence of having been compounded out of many simpler stories, more like “folktales” more than what we moderns deem to be “myths.” ‘
Real mythic characters, such as Achilles or Gilgamesh, may indeed seem to us “one-dimensional,” to use your phrase above. However, they’re usually implicated in a complex range of cultural attitudes about war, death, gender, and religion. They *seem* one-dimensional to us because our canonical literature has emphasized the importance of establishing detailed backstories and appearance of verisimiltude– though in truth many of the most celebrated literary characters of earlier eras don’t really have detailed backstories, particularly those of Shakespeare and Melville.
While I don’t argue that Broome’s GREEN LANTERN is implicated in American cultural attitudes quite to the same degree as Gilgamesh in his Epic, I think that Broome does key into many significant attitudes, certainly more than one sees in a lot of cognate figures. Marv Wolfman’s NOVA takes a number of tropes from the GREEN LANTERN concept, which in turn took tropes from Smith’s LENSMEN books. But NOVA doesn’t elaborate its tropes, and GREEN LANTERN did (see my Star Sapphire example above and in the text elsewhere).