SUPERMAN ON THE COUCH
What Superheroes Really Tell Us About Ourselves And Our Society
Danny Fingeroth
Continuum Books

David Caruso is Batman.

No, really.

If you’ve ever watched Caruso in the superb CSI: Miami, you’ll know what I mean. Caruso plays Lieutenant Horatio Caine, a detective with a razor-sharp mind and an implacable thirst for justice. A victim of crime himself, Horatio Caine cannot detach himself from other victims’ pain, but rather than let it consume him, he turns his anger into a righteous flame, which he uses to drive criminals and predators out into the light of day.

Still don’t believe me? Then watch the way Caruso uses Horatio’s sunglasses as a mask – a “game face,” if you like – to indicate where Horatio the man ends, and Caine the Justice Engine begins. Watch the episode where Caine sits in on an police interview, lurking silently in the shadows. You can’t see his face. You can’t hear him breathe. After a moment, you forget that he’s there. The perp certainly does, because when Caine finally speaks, in that low, contemptuous rasp of his, the previously cocky crim jumps out if his skin, folding like a fat man’s belly.

Horatio Caine takes every crime personally, and like the Dark Knight, vows to clean up his city, one bastard at a time.

The central theme of Danny Fingeroth’s Superman On The Couch – part academic text, part love-letter – is that superheroes are everywhere in our culture. This may not be news to those of you who are chomping at the bit to play the new Spider-Man videogame, or who still remember the first time you saw Neo take flight. But the reasons why superheroes remain so popular, sixty-five years after they were invented, and why they have been able to insinuate themselves into every genre and artistic medium at humanity’s disposal, prove far more interesting, and Fingeroth mines this seam extensively.

Superman On The Couch looks at the origins of superheroes in ancient mythology, theology and heroic legend, paying close attention to the melting pot of pulp fiction and publishing in Depression-era America that gave rise to the first modern comicbooks. Fingeroth maps the evolution of the superhero, from square-jawed New Deal-ers and weird avengers of the night to inoffensive camp to postmodern antiheroes, deconstructed objects and multimedia icons, and from kid sidekicks to Teen Titans. Along the way, he examines the enduring appeal of the genre, steeped as it is in wish-fulfillment and absolute moral values, and explores how the central tenets of the genre have manifested themselves in other forms.

Fingeroth concentrates on the major superhero icons – Superman, Spider-Man, etc. – because they’re the ones that he, and we, are most familiar with. And while superheroes aren’t necessarily limited to these archetypes, they cover the bases admirably.

Fingeroth examines the power of the Secret Identity, perhaps the most widely-known and lampooned facet of the genre. Names have power – more so if they are secret – and the fragility of the wall between the mundane and the miraculous is a rich source of inspiration in the genre.

The role of the Orphan in superhero fiction is explored, along with its resonance in literature and psychology. Fingeroth finds no coincidence in the thought that the most popular superheroes are those who come from, or seek, surrogate families. The author then relates this to the notion of wish-fulfillment: “if only we were really the children of royalty/Kryptonians/robot overlords,” etc..

The concept of superhero families is covered in detail, from the Fantastic Four – a fairly traditional family, apart from the odd trip to Atlantis – to the X-Men, who are bound by their genetic condition, rather than anything more tangible. Fingeroth defines these groups as extensions of the Orphan concept, and the need for people to feel like they are both outside the mainstream and part of a wider community at the same time.

(It may be that this explains much of the wider appeal of comics as a whole, but Fingeroth doesn’t cover this in his book)

Superman On The Couch has a number of interesting, novel things to say about the assimilation and naturalization of superhero fiction. Just as many immigrants into America adopted Anglicised versions of their family names, in order to fit in, so too did superhero fiction don non-threatening clothes in order to fit into mainstream media. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Fingeroth’s favourite example of superheroes manifesting themselves in original, sneaky ways: it borrows from Chris Claremont’s classic X-Men, in its soap-operatic approach to teen monster mashing. It explores many of the same notions of power as a metaphor for blossoming into adulthood, and the corruption of good people by too much power. It also features a number of strong female cast members – indeed, by the end of the series, Buffy became both literally and figuratively concerned with female empowerment.

Fingeroth is acutely aware of the disparity between supermen and superwomen in comics – indeed, he makes it clear that it is only outside comics that superheroines get anything approaching a fair hearing. His chapter on female superheroes in comics is by far the most interesting and striking part of the book.

The dissection of Wonder Woman allows Fingeroth to cite society’s conflicting attitudes towards women as the reason why supergirls of all stripes get such a raw deal, from the X-Men’s Phoenix (Jean Grey gone mad with cosmic power) to Elektra (Daredevil’s girlfriend, a beautiful woman with a monstrous heart). Superhero comics’ tendency to treat women as victim or vixen is dealt a shaming blow.

Superman On The Couch also features a chapter on the nature of the antihero. Fingeroth even makes time to discuss Judge Dredd – although, irritatingly, he gets the name of one of Dredd’s creators wrong (Carlos Ezquerra, not Brian Bolland), and I’m not sure Dredd revels in his duties as much as the author suggests…

The penultimate chapter of Superman On The Couch examines the increasing sophistication of the superhero, and the awareness that they are reactive, not proactive. It’s interesting to note that in this section of the book Fingeroth exposes himself as a bit of a reactionary (in the nicest possible sense): he is highly critical of the mature, deconstructionist approach taken to many modern comics - specifically, those that have been around since the sixties or before.

And while I largely disagree with Danny Fingeroth’s conclusions in this matter, I cannot fault his passion for the subject. Superman On The Couch is an engrossing book by a well-read author.

Fingeroth rounds out Superman On The Couch with a look at the future of the genre. With superheroes firmly ensconced in the Hollywood firmament, and with interactive adventures aplenty on the horizon, does it matter if the humble comicbook falls by the wayside?

No. Because superheroes are, I’m sorry to say, an incurable illness. Fingeroth acknowledges that heroic ideals – the thought that people should be good to each other, even if it means getting off your arse and making them play nice – will still be relevant, attractive, even appealing, in whatever media they might conquer next.

Superman On The Couch is a near-exhaustive look at the superhero phenomenon, through the eyes of a man who has spent all his working life around them. Fingeroth is an enthusiastic, articulate writer, and by christ he knows his onions. But while I would recommend the book to anyone with even a passing interest in comics or fiction in general, that’s not to say that the book is entirely perfect.

Leaving aside the Judge Dredd faux pas, and the fact that a former Spider-Man editor shouldn’t ever be caught calling spiders “insects,” Fingeroth’s emphasis on the most popular or widely-recognised superheroes means that there are some shocking gaps in the background material. The superhero genre isn’t the sole province of Marvel and DC, after all, no matter what they might like you to think…

Superman On The Couch features little or no discussion of the wildly popular, if occasionally shallow Image line of comics, including Spawn (who starred in a movie and adult-oriented animated series) and Savage Dragon (Erik Larsen’s long-running superhero adventure comic).

It omits Alan Moore’s ABC line of comics, such as Promethea, which took the superhero back to its roots, rebuilding from the ground up, and producing work of quite staggering beauty and scope. It glosses over such strong genre-straddling books as Powers, Astro City and Watchmen, and doesn’t even touch the work of Grant Morrison (e.g.: Animal Man, a book which uses the DC superheroes and their complex continuity to examine the relationship between creator and the created).

And it neglects to mention the WildStorm Comics characters, such as the Wildcats (corporate superheroes), Planetary (superarchaeological thriller) and the Authority. This last is perhaps the most heinous omission of all: the Authority combined cinematic storytelling techniques and a broad sense of wonder with a proactive stance that openly criticised the traditional, status quo heroes like Superman, who never really made the world better, as much as they stopped it getting worse.

How much meatier would the chapter on heroic values have been if it had looked hard at these morally complex characters, instead of glossing over them?

These characters and series have as much to say about our society as Batman or Spidey. Indeed, rather than giving us a reassuring slice of nostalgia, these characters confront us with both a sense of the moral ambiguity of today's society and the sense of wonder that exists side-by-side with it. This doesn't mean that out need for wish-fulfillment or power fantasy has gone away. Far from it: what it does is acknowledge that society has moved on, and that superhero fiction has to keep up with it, or be relegated to the cultural wasteland.

And what self-respecting superhero doesn’t perform well under pressure like that?

Superman On The Couch is a flawed, yet thoroughly engrossing read. It provides even the most jaded superhero fan with a wealth of clever, novel ideas to chew over. And while it needed to name more (and correct) names, and it could have done with a broader Recommended Reading list – one which included some actual comic books – it’s a fine examination of the superhero genre, accessible to all, that benefits from Fingeroth’s intensely personal insider perspective.

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Review Text (C) Matthew Craig

Originally published in the pop culture magazine Robot Fist