Pulp to Pop

Holy, there were quite a few people checking out the blog yesterday. Compared to what I've been getting, anyway. Welcome to any newcomers; it looks like the Traveller series has been a success. Maybe sci-fi is the way to go after all.

So, I had an interesting discussion with my son yesterday. We were talking, as usual, about the pop culture stuff that I'm collecting for him and his brothers to save them from having to watch ugly cartoons and god-awful movies that insult us at every turn. We just finished watching the Adam West Batman movie, which is a total blast of a film. It's egregiously silly, I know. But when I was a kid, that was the only live-action Batman around, and I loved it. He loves it, too.

But I also told him about getting reprints of the original Batman stories from Detective Comics back in the 1930s and 40s. I told him I had a copy of the original Batman story from Detective Comics 27 back in 1939. No, it's not an actual copy of Detective 27. If I could afford that, I wouldn't be here, would I? He expressed an interest in reading them, of course. Who wouldn't? Well, my wife wouldn't, but she's just not as cultured as we are, I suppose.

I particularly enjoyed the part where I mentioned that Batman kills a couple of people in that first story. His shock was absolute. He stared at me in disbelief; everyone knows Batman never kills! Unless it's Ben Affleck beating the holy hell out of guys in a warehouse, at least. Yeah, that's still a killer scene. If that Batman was patrolling the city, I wouldn't even return library books late.

But my son was blown away by the idea that Batman even used guns in those early issues. And it got me thinking (and talking to him) about where Superman, Batman and other early superheroes came from. People think of Superman as just appearing, fully-formed, in Action Comics #1 and changing the pop culture landscape with Kryptonian swiftness. But that just isn't true.

Superman wasn't even a unique idea; Philip Wylie's 1930 novel Gladiator features Hugo Danner, a man with incredible strength and powers very similar to those of the original Superman. And of course, John Carter was the genesis of the man who can leap prodigious distances and fight with tremendous strength and skill. It all goes back to Edgar Rice Burroughs, folks. Never forget that.

And that Superman wasn't the all-American Boy Scout he would later become; he was rough, gruff and tough, like the two-fisted pulp heroes of the day. He threatened criminals and shady characters with things like running across high-voltage wiring, or dangling them from buildings to get information from them. He was no Boy Scout, not then. But he was still awesome and cool beyond the telling of it.

Likewise, Batman came out of the pulp heroes such as the Shadow, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Zorro (who figures prominently in his origin as well). Masked men who relied on their skill and weapons to fight against evil (although the Shadow's mind-powers gave him a bit more to work with), Batman was simply those characters come to a visual medium like never before.

So, what happened to make these pulp-style heroes into the paragons and icons they are today? When did they develop their 'no-killing' codes? When did Batman decide that he'd never use a gun (because that's what killed his parents)? Those are questions that will take a bit more research, but it's interesting to compare what they were like in the late 1930s, and what they became three decades later, when Batman was TV's golden boy and Superman was still the box-office champion in the comics.

Thinking about their supporting casts, which are, other than Spider-Man, probably the most extensive in comics history, it's interesting to note that in their first appearances, only one of the iconic supporting cast members appeared in each case. In Superman's case, it's Lois Lane. No Jimmy, no Perry White, not even his Kansas parents. In fact, Kansas isn't even mentioned. All we get in the first issue is 'baby rocketed to Earth from another planet' and a few quick vignettes showing Superman in action. Stripped down to the core, it's still a pretty fantastic beginning. In the meantime, over in Gotham City, the only supporting character who appears is Commissioner Gordon. No Alfred, and no Robin, of course. just Bruce and Jim. And Gordon doesn't have much to do in the story, either.

So, it's really fun to go back and observe these characters in their nascent, primitive form and see just how much of their core was already present. Superman was already larger-than-life, public and showy but devoted to justice. Batman was dark, brooding and mysterious, using his acrobatic fighting skills to right wrongs and put down criminals hard. Harder than later, but still. It's a fascinating portrait, and I just wish I could have read these without eighty years of pre-existing baggage to color my impressions of them. Still, it's a lot of fun to read.

Now, if you like pulp-style heroics, you might want to check out The Gilded Age: The Awakening, the first book in a series that will describe a world much like our own, but with a secret hiding in plain sight: People with incredible abilities and powers, just discovering what they can do...in 1908. Check it out, and support indie publishing, because that's where you'll find the modern stories you really want to read.