Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes, page 115

Ant ManComing to Theaters in 2015

The big news is about a Marvel Hero who can make himself little. Along with sequels for Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and the first film for Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel is sending Ant Man to theaters:

Directed by Edgar Wright (“Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” “Shaun of the Dead”), the cinematic adaptation of the comic-book adventures of Henry Pym, a brilliant scientist who invents a substance that allowed him to change his size, will hit theaters on Nov. 6, 2015, according to Marvel.com.

Ant Man is not a well known hero if you're not a big Marvel Fan. His publication history has been spotty. He was the leader of the Avengers in Avengers: United We Stand which featured mostly secondary characters from the Marvel World. He made a few scattered appearances in other shows including the 1966 Captain America program and the recent Fantastic Four. He also appeared in the two direct to video Ultimate Avenger movies.

His comic book persona was known for having multiple identity crisis and guaranteed the end of his marriage to his wife Janet "The Wasp" by slapping her and thus sent both of their careers downhill.

From everything I've seen of him, he's the type of character that makes you long for the humility and stability of Tony Stark.

Whoever ends up with the role of Ant Man has a tough challenge. This isn't like playing Captain America. This is a character you really have to work hard to make the audience actually like him. As the comics portrayed him, it's going to be a tough job requiring Robert Downey type charisma to pull it off and then some.

Superhero Kindle Book Giveaway

I've got two giveaways going on for two good superhero works today and tomorrow.

First is a collection of my 2008 Stories for Laser and Sword Magazine including 4 Stories from the Order of the Sword and 4 Stories featuring A.L. Snyder, a military story in a dystopian future, as well as early versions of stories the ended up Tales of the Dim Knight. You can pick up Laser and Sword Annual. This available through Wednesday.

And then there's the sequel to Tales of the Dim Knight. Powerhouse Flies Again is my Kindle Book featuring Powerhouse giving the Superhero thing a second time. This is available for free today only. Click Here to get it.

Reading Comic Books = Research

Today on my Comixcology App, I was reading the old Justice League of America #21 and #22 "Crisis on Earth One" and "Crisis on Earth Two" and I noticed that Aquaman was called "The Sea King."

For me this was a good thing in my current work in progress I had a character I was going to name "The Sea King" but I guess I'll let Aquaman keep it and keep the folks at DC Comics happy. :)

While I've seen quite a few superhero television programs and movies, I didn't read many superhero comic books. My dad bought us three Disney Comic books when we were younger and hit a pawn shop and bought us a lot of old Looney Tunes comics from the 1950s and 60s, but he was rightly worried about the direction that superhero comic books had taken in the modern age. (He had no objection to Superheroes in other media as the first movie I remember him taking my younger brother and I to was Superman IV) My main exposure were a couple books I got from the library. Since I was a child, Marvel has started their Essentials and Masterworks collections and DC has offered numerous collections including "The Greatest Stories Ever Told," Superman and Batman collections of select comics from the 1940s to the 1980s, and their Archives collection. This makes a lot of great material available.

To me, these are useful for two reasons: First, because I use parody in my stories, this gives me some ideas for gags. Secondly, it's very helpful to see where superhero stories have been and what has worked in the past that still works today, and there's quite of fun in the best comic books of yesteryear and if you can provide that type of fun, you have something.

Superman Adventures: From Reality to Myth

Reading both Superman: The Dailies, 1939-1940 and Superman in the Forties, I was struck how Superman's mission has changed.

In early Superman stories, Superman was very much involved in the ordinary struggle of human beings as a sort of modern day Robin Hood. In the first two issues of Action Comics, Superman prevented an innocent woman from being executed, smacked around a wife-beater, took on a gang of ruffians,and ended a war by forcing the munitions manufacturer into military service. Twenty-four year old Jerry Siegel theorized that war was caused by munitions suppliers wanting nations to go to war.

Also included was a text story that was required by law in which Superman went to war with a patent attorney who was cheating his clients out of their patents.

In the comic strip, it was much the same thing. Superman battled racketeers, gamblers who ruined an honest fighter's career, an abusive orphanage administrator, and thieves selling weapons to a nation at war.

However, modern superhero stories are concerned far more with big supervillain battles against aliens, mutant lizards,and other such spectacular foes. While it's true that some issues do focus on a social issue such as human trafficking or drug use, but these sort of story lines when our heroes deal with the type of things that actually effect our lives are pretty rare. The villains they battle with are often so removed from the things that actually threaten us that it's astounding. Why aren't real life problems a bigger concern. I'd offer four reasons:

Reason #1: Our problems are too small. Simply put many of the everyday human problems we face are too small. Imagine, putting Superman on a Child and Spousal abuse case. How quick would that be? How hard of a challenge would it be for Superman to defeat the abusive spouse. Having our heroes take on supervillains rather than the type of people who do harm to us in real life we actually give our superheroes a challenge rather than ensuring a quick triumph. It's also not exciting to imagine a superhero spending weeks just to solve the complex problem of one guy in need as Superman did in one issue.

Reason #2: Our problems are too big.: Conversely, the reality of some problems are too big for comic superheroes to take on. A key example is the whole issue of war. As mentioned before, early Action Comics showed that ending war was clearly a job for Superman. Superman in the Forties contains a special 1940 two page comic done for Look Magazine where Superman ends the War by flying in and dragging Hitler and Stalin before a war crimes tribunal and resolves the whole thing. However, reality set in and Superman's role in World War II stories was limited. While if Superman were real, he could end the war in a second, he wasn't and it would take th death of millions to end it. Once America became engaged in the war, it would have been a mockery to imagine Superman swooping down with red cape and boots and making it all better would be absurd at best and disrespectful at worst. And most big problems are like that. They're too big to solve by Hulk smashing something or a few webs. And in order to avoid absurdity, there are some issues that are not addressed at all.

Reason #3 We seek escapism not catharsis : If you or someone you know had been oppressed by the rackets, there had to be a great sense of catharsis of seeing your oppressors really get what for. However, comics have an entirely different set of readers, most of whom don't need catharsis by are seeking escapism. Far out there alien villains are for better for that purpose than real world menace.

Reason #4: We Can't Agree on What Problems Should be Addressed: The things Superman went after in the late 1930s were things most Americans agreed were bad. Gangsters, brutal wife beaters, gangsters,and abusers of orphans were all classes of people who there was little sympathy for. However, many others today are divided. Certainly, some comic books have taken social stances (most left wing), but those stances always have to be tempered lest superheroes are stereotyped as a left wing outlet. If that happens, movies like The Avengers and The Dark Knight won't happen in terms of their popularity that cuts across partisan lines. Liberals may like their favorite comic book character standing up for environmentalism and the gay movement, but would probably not be appreciative of a character being pro-life and against teacher's unions. The danger of pulling superheroes too deeply into politics checks even the most strident comic book artist.

This also brought to mind something I was reading in Paul Asay's book,
God on the Streets of Gotham: What the Big Screen Batman Can Teach Us about God and Ourselves. Asay wrote about his own father's decision to banish superheroes from his life. He is quite understanding of why his dad did it and why other Christian parents may do it because some kids may view superheroes "as a replacement for Christ."

However, my thinking about this issue of the type of battles our superheroes fight these days calls to mind a great contrast that kids and adults should keep in mind in addition to the differences between the Son of God and a fictional character. With Christ, there is no problem we might have that is too big, too small, or too hot to handle. He is intimately concerned with our lives in every detail. 1 Peter 5:7 says to cast your cares upon him for he careth for you.

50 Ways to Name Your Book (Book Naming Contest)

I'm currently working on the third installment of my Adventures of Powerhouse book series. The first, Powerhouse Flies Again is now available for the Kindle.

The second is called, Powerhouse and the Rise of the Robolawyers due out sometime next month.

The third? Well, that's a bit of a problem. I honestly have no idea what I'll call the third one.

The basic plot involves Mitch Farrow, the CEO of Dorado Incorporated waging war against Powerhouse. First, he tries some conventional supervillain methods before resorting to using the media to destroy Powerhouse and then more supervillain methods with the goal of eliminating Powerhouse.

The current working title is 50 Ways to Kill a Hero attempting to evoke the Neil Simon song, "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover." My bride Andrea pointed out to me that in the modern publishing environment, the title could evoke the image of "Fifty Shades of Grey." Definitely not something I want to evoke. Plus even the Neil Simon song's not necessarily the type of image I want to use (I was more familiar with the title than the song), but you got to have something for a working title. I don't "50 Ways to Kill a Hero" think will make on the cover.

So help me out here. What would you suggest as a title for this story? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

If I choose your suggestion, I'll send you a Kindle Copy of Tales of the Dim Knight and Powerhouse Flies Again.. In addition when whatever the third story will be called is released in paperback, it'll be in collection, I will send you the paperback version containing the story you helped name.

Early Superman: Our Politically Incorrect Hero

I finished Superman: The Dailies, 1939-1940 and it was a pretty fun look at the earliest Superman stories. The stories and artwork were fun in telling the original stories of the Man of Steel. His villains are mostly thugs, gangsters, corrupt government officials, warmongers, and a government assassin thrown in.

The early comic book is marked by some politically incorrect moments.

Superman uses enhanced interrogation procedures on thugs, tossing them up and down in air to get them to talk. And in one story, leaving them chained in a pool of water where they'd been holding Lois Lane, promising only to let them out if they confess.

In addition, a princess doesn't take kindly to Superman's refusal of her advances, so she tries to stab him. Superman responds by taking her over his knee and giving her a spanking which Superman concludes is long overdue. And when Lois complained about being demoted from reporter and stuck on the lovelorn columns, Clark Kent says, "Little girl getting bored?" (Though, it's hard to tell whether Kent's sincere in that mocking as he foregos a scoop and helps Lois get back to reporting.)

Of course, while Superman doesn't quite measure up to today's standards of political correctness, he was also addressing real problems confronting people in the 1930s and 40s with vigor. In one case, he dedicated himself to helping a down and out boxer get back into the ring, getting the homeless boxer into an apartment and training him while fighting disguised as the boxer, right until the championship fight.

Superman dedicating his time to helping one guy and defeating a gang of gamblers? Wouldn't happen today, but that's what the early Superman did. He was concerned about orphans being cheated by unscrupulous managers, the devastation of war, and the oppression of crooks and crooked politicians on the innocent.

You combine the goodness and the political incorrectness and this Superman reminds me a lot of many people I've met who are older who say things out of bad habits. They aren't up on the latest politically correct words, but they've got the courage and know the difference between right and wrong. It takes very little character to just avoid offending people, but a lot more to actually put it on the line to help others.

Beyond this note, The strips seem to chart three key journeys:

1) Superman from the rough around the edges character we meet in the comic strips and Action Comics #1 to the "Boy Scout" we know from productions such as George Reeves Adventures of Superman.

2) Lois Lane's journey from struggling journalist being kept down by the man to the daredevil of the Fleischer Cartoons.

3) The comic's journey from fantasy/reality to pure fantasy. Superman's early days are filled with a lot of real life characters that threaten and hurt real people to the fantastic costumed characters that inhabit most comic books from the Silver Age to the present. (More on that in another post.)

This particular collection or the bigger collection of all Superman strips from 1939-42 is a must-read for fans.

The Writing Process: The Mad Scientist in the Chewbacca Costume

This week, I finished the first draft of a key section of the third book in the Adventures of Powerhouse Series.

In it, Powerhouse goes to Comic Con to help promote some new comics from his company Blue Cat Comics.

The prime villain Mitch Farrow, CEO of Dorado Incorporated is trying a new tact. Having failed to destroy powerhouse physically, he's resolved to trash Powerhouse's reputation by attacking him and his new heroes.

Farrow's mad scientist in residence, Doctor Fournier is along incognito to enjoy the convention. Imagining himself to be a wanted man, Fournier dresses in a Chewbacca costume while still wearing his signature bow tie.

Doctor Fournier was a minor character in Tales of the Dim Knight but an important one. He developed the one and only weapon that was able to stop Powerhouse, a force field generator. He returns in the 2nd Adventures of Powerhouse book, Rise of the Robolawyers. (Currently waiting to be edited by my wife lovely wife Andrea Graham and tentatively slated for a November 2012 release.)

He's a fun character to write. He's a mad scientist but for the most part acts cool and levelheaded. He has no designs on world domination or the maniacal laughter we associate with the typical mad scientist character.

His flaw and his brand of evil is the one that comes when their desires have no bounds. Fournier loves science, creating things, building things, and solving problems. Nothing in this is evil or sinful.

However, what makes Fournier do evil things is that his desires have no bounds or limits at all. He'll do anything to satisfy his curiosity and solve problems for anyone, including someone whose problem is that Powerhouse is still breathing.

In this particular story line, I have a lot of fun with Fournier as his Chewbacca costume fools even Powerhouse who asks for his help.

Teams of Convenience

Before we leave this whole topic of superhero teams, there's one type of team that's worth mentioning and that is the teams of convenience.

Many of the great superhero teams such as the Justice League and Avengers have had constant turnover particularly in recent years. The teams, particularly in their full forms are not balanced and they're not really "super friends" at least not all of them when you get on teams with dozens of members.

On one level, the comic book Justice League and Avengers are reminiscent of many "teams" thrown together in workplaces though with far more interesting tasks.

On another, they remind us of many organizations of people who join together on occasion for common cause, whether its a volunteer fire department in rural areas or a political group. Great caution is required in these situations as the bonds that tie are weak, and the risk of schism is pronounced. Thus, as both teams have learned, establishing a sense of community can be helpful to long term survival.

While these sort of groups are not ideal, they may have just as much importance as the other two types of teams.

The Great Teams of Fiction: The Family Teams

Continuing on our previous posts about different types of teams, there's another important type of team to talk about and that's what I like to call the family type.

While the balanced team brings a great deal of diversity. However, diversity is not without its drawbacks. Oftentimes, very diverse areas enjoy a great deal of productivity but they also can hurt a sense of community and belonging according to one study.

There's a longing for community, for a sense that we belong and that brings us to a type of team that appeals to that level and that is the family team.

The team need not be perfectly balanced, but there's ultimately a sense of unity in common cause and genuine belonging. This was a big theme of television shows I watched when I was growing up. The best of them did it very well.

True family teams are somewhat limited in the Superhero world. Most superheroes' default status is to fight alone: one-on-one against the forces of evil.

There are, of course, Teams like the Avengers or The Justice League are ad-hoc coalitions that bring together some of these solo fighters. However, the comings and goings of these teams make things feel less like a team and more like an on-again and off-again coalition, particularly with them messing around with multiple Avenger and Justice League teams. While Super Friends may have been applicable to these heroes at one points, Super Acquaintances and Occasional Allies may be more appropriate.

The X-men have had many comings and goings and internal squabbles with a lot of Ex-X-men and some who come back after being Ex-X-Men and then are Ex-Ex-X-men and then there are those who leave again after coming back and they're known as Ex-Ex-Ex-X-men and then...

However, once again, The Fantastic Four . In
Who Needs a Superhero?: Finding Virtue, Vice, and Whats Holy in the Comics, Michael Brewer praises the Fantastic Four as an example of the type of family situation that Christians and the Church in particular should exemplify, even to the extent that they often welcome other heroes to their world and as partners.

Of course, the Fantastic Four has had riffs and members leaving and various squabbles over the past 50 years. But with the Fantastic Four, they always ultimately end up back together because that's where they belong. It's that family that ultimately draws them back and it's what keeps people interested them and in good teams that speak to our desire to be more than just a means to an end but also to find that place where we belong.

The Great Teams of Fiction: The Balanced Teams

Reviewing the Justice League calls to mind, the beauty of a team.

True teams are not things we see frequently. In my life, I've been on may teams that are thrown together randomly. In sports, teams change drastically from season to season.

However, fiction produces the greatest teams.

I'll take a look at the three types of teams:

The Balanced Team: I think this type of team is only produced in perfection by fiction. It's personalities and skills match and compliment one another.

Probably, the best example of this I've ever seen was the 1980s A-Team. You had the brilliant leader Hannibal Smith. You had Face who could con anyone out of anything. You had the mechanical genius known as BA Baracus. With all that talent combined you always got your money's worth when you hired the A-Team.

For Superheroes, the Fantastic Four is a great example of such a team. The fight scenes with all four of them on their game are simply wonderful. The scientific genius and elasticity of Mr. Fantastic, the shielding powers of the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch's ability to flame on all combine to make them very hard to handle. You can defeat any one of them , but coming up with the right strategy to beat all four? Much harder.

Of course, while fiction writers draw to extremes, this same thing is at work in the truly great businesses and ministries. The fictional examples show the strength of diverse talents, styles, and names.

For Christians, the apostle Paul offers some solid application using the body as an example in 1 Corinthians 12:


For the body does not consist of one member but of many....And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.-1 Corinthians 12:14, 16-20 (ESV)

Too often, we get the idea that everyone should be like us. However, there are many ways people are different because God made them different and we need to honor that with the people God brings into our lives. The things that make us different can be the things that can come in very handy for the best of the whole body.