Modern Supers, Ancient Myths (Part II)
Sometimes superheroes are lifted directly out of ancient mythology, as discussed in Part I of this series. Other times, the nature and creation of superheroes are “inspired by” ancient mythology.
Because the latter is less direct, it’s harder to prove, but there’s no shortage of writers who set out to do so. Here are examples of just a few of the parallels that have been drawn:
GRST 202 Blog lays out a series of comparisons between ancient mythic heroes and modern superheroes:
> Captain American and Heracles: “Captain America could be regarded as a super patriotic Heracles. As Heracles had his shield that embodied events of the Olympics, Captain America has a shield that embodies the country he fights for. Heracles is the only human that became god, and had to go through many demeaning tasks and suffer a great deal of pain before becoming a god. The same goes for Captain America, in a more modernized sense.”
> Ironman and Daedalus: “They were mad scientists of a sort, inventors that gave birth to creations of both wonder and horror.”
> Justice League and the Greek pantheon: “The Justice League is pretty much the pantheon. The Greek gods live on the top of Mount Olympus, separated from all of the humans. The Justice League lives in the Watchtower. In space. Completely isolated from humans. Zeus is the leader of the gods, Superman is the leader of the league.”
In A Place to Hang Your Cape, David Molofsky makes the parallels between the Justice League and the Olympians even more explicit. Members of the Justice League are equated with specific gods:
> Superman is Zeus
> Batman is Hades
> Aquaman is Posiedon
> Wonder Woman is Hera
> Artemis is Artemis
> Hawkman is Ares
> Green Lantern is Hephaestus
> Green Arrow is Apollo
> Oracle is Athena
> Black Canary is Aphrodite
> The Flash is Hermes
It’s easy enough to quibble with the specifics here, with some parallels being more obvious than others, but the overall argument is intriguing.
Other writers focus more on the mythic archetypes rather than on specific parallels.
Becca Caddy, for example, compares Superman with a variety of mythical and religious figures, from Heracles and Achilles, to Moses and Krishna.
She also discusses the X-Men’s Jean Grey and how she represents the “monstrous feminine” archetype. Jean is, of course, a powerful mutant with telekinetic and other psychic powers. But she can’t always control her powers and inside harbors a monster capable of destroying the universe. One feminist interpretation is that this is because Jean Grey represents a female stereotype. Caddy writes:
Now arguably there are a number of monstrous feminine characters throughout mythology. The most obvious is Medusa, using her appearance to literally turn people to stone. But there are other more subtle examples, like Pandora who just like Jean is unable to control her female urges and opens up her box (ahem). There are also other characters, such as the sirens, who use their sexuality to lure men to their death – at one point they weren’t beautiful mermaid-like creatures but were actually half-woman, half-bird.
Of course, there are also plenty of powerful male superheroes who are exceedingly bad at controlling their powers (e.g., Hulk), but we’ll leave that debate for academics and comic-book devotees. The point is that, even when we don’t find a one-to-one correlation between mythical characters and superheroes, we can find plenty of more abstract and, one might say, archetypal or trope-like connections.
So, what does all this tell us about about impact of ancient and modern mythologies (e.g., well-known comic-book fictions)? We’ll discuss that in Part III of our series.
P.S. – Although I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, I suppose the character of Hallr Halftroll in The Tollkeeper bears a family resemblance to the Hulk. Of course, we could also argue that the Hulk is himself descended from myths of giants and trolls. Indeed, in the 1988 movie The Incredible Hulk Returns, a (pretty cheesy) version of Thor actually refers to the Hulk as The Troll. And so it is that modern and ancient mythologies continuously cycle back on one another in a kind of infinite Möbius-strip-like loop.
The post Modern Supers, Ancient Myths (Part II) appeared first on The Tollkeeper.
