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American Superhero Comics: Fractal Narrative and The New Deal A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Lawrence W. Beemer June 2011 © 2011 Lawrence W. Beemer. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled American Superhero Comics: Fractal Narrative and The New Deal by LAWRENCE W. BEEMER has been approved for the English Department of Ohio University and the College of Arts and Sciences by ______________________________ Robert Miklitsch Professor of English ______________________________ Benjamin M. Ogles Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT BEEMER, LAWRENCE W., Ph.D., June 2011, English American Superhero Comics: Fractal Narrative and The New Deal (204 pp.) Director of Dissertation: Robert Miklitsch Coining the term "fractal narrative," this dissertation examines the complex storytelling structure that is particular to contemporary American superhero comics. Whereas other mediums most often require narrative to function as self-contained and linear, individual superhero comics exist within a vast and intricate continuity that is composed of an indeterminate number of intersecting threads. Identical to fractals, the complex geometry of the narrative structure found in superhero comics when taken as a whole is constructed by the perpetual iteration of a single motif that was established at the genre's point of origin in Action Comics #1. The first appearance of Superman institutes all of the features and rhetorical elements that define the genre, but it also encodes it with the specific ideology of The New Deal era. In order to examine this fractal narrative structure, this dissertation traces historical developments over the last seven decades and offers a close reading Marvel Comics' 2006 cross-over event, Civil War. Approved: _________________________________________________________ Robert Miklitsch Professor of English 4 PREFACE On Wednesdays, my faith in flight and right’s inevitable victory over wrong is refreshed. I look forward to Wednesdays; it’s the day that new comics make their way into the shops, and I’ve been reading these brightly colored and vividly illustrated tales of costumed crusaders for over thirty years. When I was first beginning to read, I would tag along with my grandfather, who was the chief of police in the small town that I grew up in and who was the closest thing to a superhero that I’ve ever met. Grandpa would make himself available to the community by spending hours at a lunch counter in the center of the village, and he would bring me along. While he smoked, drank coffee, and talked to the locals, I sat beside him and drank milkshakes while swiveling back and forth on a chrome plated stool. The store had a tall rack of comics at one end of the counter, and I was allowed to read them all before picking one or two to purchase. Sgt. Rock and World’s Finest were my favorites, and I would almost always choose those. Archie was lame. As a kid, my favorite activity was reading comics while enjoying hours of solitude in my room. I didn’t just read comics; I read them, reread them several times, memorized them, and I even tried to counterfeit the illustrations. This was in the late 70s when no one considered comics a collectable or an investment opportunity. I remember going to yard sales and flea markets where one could buy a brown shopping bag of assorted comics for a dollar. When I got home, I would filter the new comics into the stacks that I already had; I sorted them numerically and by title, and then I would read every comic book I owned as one continuous story. As it turns out, my early forays into 5 obsessive compulsiveness proved to be exactly the reading strategy one needs to bring to contemporary American superhero comics. Superheroes have been a staple in popular culture for over seventy years, but it is really only in the last decade that they have become the subject of serious consideration. This is partly due to the unbelievable box office success of the film adaptations; advances in CGI have recently made it possible for movies to convincingly depict images that could only have been hand drawn in years past. More importantly, the generation that witnessed a remarkable development of production qualities in comics while in their adolescence have come of age and have begun to assert themselves as academics and cultural critics. Generation X's once eclectic tastes have gone mainstream. Several books dealing with superheroes have been published in the last ten years, and each has offered a distinct approach to the subject. Several methods of literary criticism have been employed: new historicism, psychoanalysis, reader response, structuralism, etc. Ironically, some critics have even resorted to approaches, like classicism and Arnoldian humanism, that embody an attitude that has been historically dismissive of popular culture. These critical approaches were designed for different purposes, and when one examines a comic through a lens intended for novels or movies, one's view of it will inevitably be distorted. Critics have done great work in terms of the genre's generalities and by performing close readings of singular texts, but such approaches frequently neglect the key feature of superhero comics, continuity. This dissertation proposes that the content of most comic books is far less important than the relationship among those comics. 6 Whether it's insisting on Aristotle's unities or making sure that a set is dressed consistently throughout a film shot out of sequence, continuity is a key feature of storytelling. Without attention to continuity, a story can become disorientating or entirely illegible. Superhero comics make use of continuity on a scale that cannot be found in any other text. Their narrative construction is entirely unique; the storytelling in superhero comics requires consistency across innumerable publications that are composed by an equally countless number of writers and artists over protracted periods of time. Whereas all other forms of storytelling can be diagrammed as simple arcs or tangents, superhero comics defy Euclidean geometry. My argument is that a superhero comic cannot be read independently of every other superhero comic that has ever been published. I have coined the term fractal narrative and use it to describe the geometric structure that emerges through the intersections of long-standing continuities mutually shaping and informing the contents of individual publications. This structure, which has been developing since the introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, is the main obstacle for anyone attempting to read a comic for the first time, but it is also what makes comics the rich and remarkable texts that they are. It demands a new critical strategy that emphasizes interrelatedness over individualization. Superman is the first character of his kind, and although there have been hundreds of superheroes created since 1938, each has been a slightly varying iteration of the original template. In addition to capes, powers and secret identities, Action Comics #1 supplied the genre with a specific ideological framework. Superman was first heralded as 7 a "champion of the oppressed" and clearly embodied The New Deal. This particular political alignment has remained a persistent feature of the very definition of superheroism. Although the focus of political urgency has shifted several times since the conclusion of The Great Depression, superheroes have remained constant in the way they challenge the different issues of changing times. Of course, comics aren't limited to the portrayal of superheroic escapades. Graphic novels dealing with a variety of non-fictional topics have gained a good deal of notoriety and critical attention in recent years, and serialized publications, like Garth Ennis' Preacher and Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, have excelled at exploring different genres. Japanese manga has enjoyed a rapid increase in popularity in the United States. While each of these deserves attention in its own right, this project focuses solely on American superhero comics, which represent the vast majority of comics publications and adhere to structural conventions that cannot be found in any other genre or medium. The Superheroic Subject The first chapter of this dissertation establishes the perspective from which I will examine the materials in the subsequent sections. A survey of several existing critical works will help to situate and differentiate the particular aims of this project. This chapter distinguishes between graphic novels, which generally enjoy high regard, and superhero comics, which continue to be dismissed as mere pop culture. By looking at the narrative strategies employed in stand-alone texts and mythology, a case is made for fractal narrative being the only appropriate descriptor for the continuity found in and between 8 superhero comics. Finally, this chapter engages the issue of whether or not superhero comic books can or should be considered Art. A Terse History of Tights The second chapter begins with a discussion of Steven Johnston's "sleeper curve," which is a term he uses to illustrate popular culture's trend toward ever increasing complexity and sophistication. The chapter presents a selective history of comics from the publication of The Funnies in 1929 to the first cross-over events in the mid-80s. Particular attention is paid to the persistence of New Deal ideology despite shifting historical contexts and to the layering, interruption, and intersection of comics that produce the genre's geometric structure. A Case Study in Civil War The final chapter examines Civil War, a 2006 cross-over event produced by Marvel Comics. This event exemplifies the current state of superhero narrative. The story unfolds over a period of a year and is composed in excess of one hundred individual comics. The histories of the major characters are explicated in order to show how comprehension of the story is dependent on several decades worth of foreknowledge and to illustrate the resoluteness of superheroic politics despite the writer’s desire to craft a story that undermines that essential characteristic. 9 Everything I do is dedicated to my wife, Cristy. This particular work is also dedicated to my grandfather, Larry Muller, And to my son, Jackson Parker Beemer. Superheroes past and future. 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am, of course, indebted to my dissertation committee which was chaired by Robert Miklitsch and composed of Roger Aden, Samuel Crowl, and Eric LeMay. I would also extend my gratitude to Tom Newkirk for his direction and insight and to Barbara Grueser for her guidance through the administrative morass of graduate school. Thanks also to David Lazar for encouraging me to choose an unconventional topic, but one that is important to me. I would also like to express my bottomless appreciation to my mother, Janet, and my step-father, Mike, for their perpetual love, encouragement, and support. Lastly, I would like to offer my thanks to the myriad writers, artists, and editors of comic books who have given me a lifetime of inspiration and entertainment.