Monomyth: A Self-Discovery

With Rob and Amanda waist deep in nerd sweat out at San Diego Comic-Con, I’m left to my own thoughts and that’s not usually a good thing.

In an earlier post, Rob alluded to my very subtle unhappiness with what DC, and in particular Rob Liefeld, did to a couple of my favorite New 52 characters.  I was very disappointed with what happened with Voodoo when Ron Marz was relieved of duty. But when Liefeld took over Grifter, I nearly ripped the book in half.   I’ve tried writing a couple reviews of the recent iterations of these books, but I find myself digressing into a raving ball of spit and bile.  And after some soul searching, I had an epiphany….

I don’t like superheroes…

More specifically, I don’t really enjoy the over-eager, balls-out, invulnerable metahuman type of hero that is prevalent in the books of the “mainstream” publishers. I’m drawn to the everyman, put into a situation beyond comprehension, and watching them cope with it: Campbell’s classic Hero’s Journey. I prefer my Han Solo to shoot first because he’s a self-absorbed prick, which makes it infinitely more interesting when his actions turn selfless.  I loved Watchmen because it deconstructed the idea of heroes and explored the psyche required to put on spandex and run around fighting crime. I didn’t mind that V from V For Vendetta was just some guy who was pushed too far; I found solace in it and I empathized.

Look, I’m sure that Rob Liefeld is not such a bad guy, foot issues notwithstanding. But ultimately, Grifter was interesting to me because he was just some guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, coping with things outside of any normal human experience. He wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider or trapped in a gamma ray chamber and overcome with a desire to right wrongs and look out for the little guy; he was trying to survive, and eventually, he became motivated by pure revenge and hate. Liefeld took over and suddenly Grifter is massively telekinetic, wearing armor, and fighting super-aliens with names like “Synge”. He turned it into a more-of-the-same, vanilla metahuman story – a complete left turn from the just established origin. Hey, I get that some people, maybe even most people, find that more entertaining, but I find it… boring.

Looking through my long boxes of books, that I bought way back when Rob and I took road trips to the comic stores back in the day, there isn’t a single “classic” super hero book in the lot. The closest one in there is Batman, and even then, it’s only the post-Miller Batman – the one who embraced the darkness, not the one with the gee-whiz, POW! – THWAP! fisticuffs (Not that I have anything at all against Bob Kane, Jack Kirby or any of the golden age writers, it’s just not my bag).

My boxes are, ultimately, filled with more human stories about the human condition. Be it fantasy based stuff like Usagi Yojimbo, the historical insight of Maus or even the sci-fi of Robotech,  at their core they weren’t stories about mystical powers; they were about the best and worst in people (or anthropomorphized rabbits as it were).  Hell, even my beloved Tick was blatantly poking fun at the trope.

I can’t take anything away from the superhero genre; there are some great characters and stories out there. Stan Lee set the ball in motion 50 years ago by giving Spider-Man personal problems that the everyman could relate to. As simple as those problems seem to us relative to today’s stories, it’s important to remember and acknowledge that this evolution allowed the likes of Miller, Ennis, and Gaiman to push the envelope. Comics are a visceral and important medium for modern storytelling.  They bring us escape from our mundane lives; remind us that everyone is the hero in their own story; and, the only way we can appreciate that is to look at life from as many points of view as possible. Over the past century, they have evolved to the point where there is truly something out there for everyone.

What’s the point? I’ve been struggling to find things to review for this site and now I understand why. Rob and I go way, way back, and we’ve always had similar tastes, but those tastes are divergent enough that there’s actually very little overlap in the kinds of books we really love.  I’m going to let Rob and Amanda provide you with insight into the world of superhero books and focus my efforts on the fringes.  Keep an eye out for some new stuff from the grey space in the near future.