I have to put my hands up at the start of this post and declare that my credentials to talk about comics stand at approximately zero (the credentials for existential angst I feel I can claim to be somewhat higher). Of the superhero film franchises, I’ve seen a few but by no means all, but I’ve never got into comics as a visual medium. Of what I have seen, I think it’s fair to say that both tights and angst feature strongly. There’s an aesthetic in these stories which is appealing – the masks, the paraphernalia, the exclusive powers, the generally cool stuff. And then there’s what makes those characters tick, which for me personally is the more interesting bit.
If there’s one book that should be mentioned in reference to comics, it has to be The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. It’s a few years since I read it and my memory isn’t good enough to talk about it in detail, but quite apart from the (quite epic) journeys of its two brilliantly realized central protagonists, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, Kavalier & Clay is a wonderful exercise in both the history of comics and what, at a particular point in history, they strove to achieve. Sammy and Joe, in discussing the hero of their own new comic book superhero (will he be a hawk? A lion? A tiger? They can’t decide), pinpoint the issue of what drives a superhero thus: (more…)
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