Why Do Superheroes Need Angst?

Recently (and by "recently" I mean since the eighties, so pretty recently considering the history of the superhero, which is still a comparatively short amount of time in the history of Western storytelling), there has become this trend in superhero movies to portray them as misunderstood loners with tragic personal lives and chasms of unfathomable depth in their heavy hearts.

My point with that ridiculously long run-on sentence was that there must be a reason people like these kinds of stories. I mean, there has to be reason that so many like "The Dark Knight Rises" even though it's basically the story of a whiny cripple who tries to relive the glory days and breaks his back in the process.

Also, he looks like a dirty hobo the whole time, despite the fact that he's one of the richest people in the DC universe.

I mean, superheroes didn't start out this way at all. Superman, the first superhero, was basically designed as a man beyond human limitations, with the ability to jump high, run fast, and punch hard (there's a more poetic description with bullets and buildings but that's basically what it boils down to).

And you might argue that superhero fans secretly craved realism back then. But consider Captain Marvel - who's basically like Superman but his powers are based on magic, not science, and also he's like double the boy scout Superman could ever hope to be because he's actually a ten-year-old boy who's literally a boy scout.

In the 1940's, Captain Marvel consistently sold more copies than Superman, and he was way less realistic than Superman. Yeah, that's right. At one time, Superman was the realistic superhero.



Realism in the 1940's.

Captain Marvel, in addition to being magically powered and childishly innocent, also had one more difference between himself and Superman - he could fly. So what did Superman's writers do? Did they try to market Superman as being a more human, more realistic, more gritty depiction of a superhero? I'll give you a hint.

Does he look "gritty and realistic" to you?

Instead, they said, "Oh, yeah, Captain Marvel? You can fly? Well anything you can do, Superman can do better!" and thus Superman became a flier. You could argue about whether this actually makes for a better story, but my gut tells me they didn't give a fuck about the story. They were just trying to figure out whose dick was bigger.

Maybe they thought that the only way that Superman could beat Captain Marvel in sales was to make it so Superman could beat Captain Marvel in a fight. The whole comic book industry might have been an arms race that took place entirely in the imagination of nerds.

But then everything changed. In 1986-8, three comic books came out that led people away from the "Superman with a bald eagle perched on his shoulder" archetype of a superhero and more towards the "hobo Batman with a broken back has to stop a crazed terrorist and by the way Batman's love interest is also a terrorist" archetype of a superhero.

These comic books were Watchmen (which is about a disbanded group of ex-masked vigilantes reacting to the death of their comrade The Comedian, starring a character who is basically The Question but crazier), "The Killing Joke" (where it is revealed that The Joker's murders are actually a form of absurdist expression, like Waiting for Godot but not quite as horrible), and Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? (which is about Superman giving up his powers and retiring to spend more time with his family.)

Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow? He's teaching some snot-nosed kid the ABC's.

Because these comic books offered a new, fresh, realistic take on superheroes, they were exhilarating, interesting and shocking. Back in 1986. You know, when there wasn't a hundred thousand other comic books/shows/movies trying to do the exact same thing.

You see, thirty years ago, no one was giving superheroes human flaws, world-weariness, and varying degrees of insanity. But nowadays, you can't get away from writers who think they're clever because they made Batman even edgier. The next Batman movie will be three hours of a black screen with a voice-over by what sounds like a smoker with pneumonia.

Although I'm not entirely sure that isn't the plot of the last movie.

But that's the thing, isn't it? Kids don't like superheroes because of the air of painful realism. Kids like superheroes because they punch the bad guys! I think every child is born with something in their psyche that wishes all the problems in the world could be punched in the face before dinner.

And being an adult doesn't mean you grow out of that. Everybody wishes that there was an easy solution for all of the world's problems. But there isn't. The world is a dark, cold, scary place with racism, poverty, disease and famine. And it's very hard to punch these problems away.

Superman's first encounter with an unpunchable problem.

So there's the appeal of superhero angst - it's a dark solution to a dark world. But I have to believe - and maybe this is my quixotic inner child speaking - that we don't have to believe that Superman has to cry like a baby whenever he fights General Zod. Adding darkness to darkness doesn't make the world any brighter.

Many comic book nerds argue, as they put down their Mountain Dews and brush the Dorito crumbs out of their neckbeards, that this dark, edgy brand of superhero is a good thing. They're finally taking superheroes seriously. These superheroes are profound.

But what if we could see superheroes in all their overoptimistic, idealistic, and even campy glory? What if we could see them facing this cruel world with childlike hope in their hearts instead of the despair which would provide such a comforting numbness? How much more profound could a superhero be?