“AND TO THINK THEY USED TO CALL ME SKINNY!“ PART 1: ARE SUPERHEROES AND SUPERHEROINES CHEATING?

Chris Buse (RIP)

6 years ago

Let“s all admit to the elephant in the room. If you are into comics and have been for a long time, and into all kinds of genre literature, chances are, you were not outside playing football or softball with the other kids. You hung with a bunch of uncool kids who all knew the civilian identities of all the members of The Justice League and The Avengers. How you consumed your comic books depends largely on your own personal circumstances. Maybe you had a circle of friends with whom you talked about new comics endlessly. Maybe your parents were cool with you reading comics, or maybe they wanted you to read a “real”“ book, or instead suggested, that you went outside to play with the other children. Did the older, more athletic kids make fun of you and your love for these four-color treasures when they saw you with your comics? How you discovered your first comic book, and where you bought your comic books after that, at a newsagent, off a spinner rack at a drugstore, at a neighborhood supermarket, or if you found them in a store that sold old comics, the one that smelled of paper and sweat, if you had to visit several places because the latest issue was sold out, this is determined by the time period and the country you grew up in. In the 1940s, in the United States, comic books were a disposable, ubiquitous medium. In 1938, the first issue of Action Comics #1 saw print. It was an immediate hit with readers. This title and another comic, Superman, named after the very first superhero, launched a year later, sold millions of copies each month. Superman“s publisher, Detective Comics, Inc. (later, after its merger with another publisher, to be re-named DC Comics) had introduced another superhero character just a few months earlier, further testing the waters with this new genre in the still very young comic book market. Before Superman would have a comic bearing his name, The Batman appeared in an already established comic book series, the one that bore the company“s name. The character seemed perfect for this series that dealt with noir-type crime stories, and which had featured up to this point, Slam Bradley, an adventurer who solved crimes, and who also had been created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the writer and artist team that had dreamt up Superman. The Batman however (created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger) did not have any superpowers to speak of. Nor do we get a neat introductory page to his first adventure like in Action Comics No. 1 for Superman. “The Bat-Man”“ just appears. And in the universe of this first story, everybody already knew about his existence. When he shows up in the second panel of the fourth page, the criminals he is facing, don“t need to ask: “Who are you?”“, with him answering in a husky voice “I am Batman!”“. They know the hero by name: “The Bat-Man!!!”“. The three exclamation marks indicating that of course they know of his reputation. His origin tale followed six issues later. In Detective Comics No. 33 we learn of the boy who witnessed his parents getting killed by a mugger, with him swearing that he will devote his life to “warring on all criminals.”“ The origin is dealt with swiftly. We get flashbacks of his training. First his mind. And he “trains his body to physical perfection until he is able to perform amazing athletic feats.”“ But for him to be a superhero, something else is needed. The boy, a man now, sitting in his late father“s estate that left him wealthy, realizes he must have a disguise. Â Luckily: “”¦ as if in answer, a huge bat flies in the open window! Thus is born this weird figure of the dark”¦ this avenger of evil. The Batman.”“ Between these superheroes, we get two origin stories and sets of superpowers that couldn“t be any more different from each other. Other superheroes and origin stories would follow very soon.

In the world of superhero comic books, there are several ways a person might attain superpowers. You were born with them. They are bestowed on you by a well-meaning magical character, or a person who passed them on to you in an act of atonement. Or for you to carry on his legacy as the chosen one. You came upon an object of power, only to have it later revealed, that this was no coincidence and you were in fact destined to come into the possession of such powerful item and all was revealed to you (and the readers) during the course of the story. Or you obtained them in a freak accident or by scientific means or a combination thereof. Or you trained or were trained, both in mind and body, like The Batman. And with him, this was initially achieved in just two panels. The first panel shows pre-Batman Bruce Wayne handling some scientific equipment in a laboratory wearing safety goggles and looking all smart. In the second panel, we see a muscular Bruce Wayne lifting some weights, with one hand mind you. He would remain the exception though, with the little training we see him doing. Apart from the mostly powerless sidekicks some superheroes associated with, superheroes were superheroes because they had powers. Even those who had no special abilities, or a scientific gimmick, or a magical object, were built like this lack of superpowers was but an oversight. Or they were simply too good looking not to be superheroes. Like aviatrix Black Venus, or Speed Comics“ Pat Parker, who“d fought the “Ratzis”“ with abandon before she put on a skimpy outfit that left little to the imagination and adopted a secret identity as War Nurse. Superheroes and superheroines were humans at peak perfection, or more than human. They all fought for the betterment of society. Even Batman. The solemn oath taken by young Bruce Wayne, was not to avenge the murder of his parents by getting revenge on their killer, but to avenge them by “warring on all criminals.”“ For the rest of his life. So perhaps, like with Bruce Wayne, even you could become one of the superheroes or superheroines if you worked hard. Another non-superpowered superhero like him, or one of the sidekicks at least. But then herein lies the contradiction. If you did this, if you trained your body (and perhaps your mind), you were still not a superhero. If you achieved this, it was because you had motivated yourself to do so, for your own reasons. However, Superheroes do not have such agency. All Superheroes have a mission, even The Dark Knight. And it is an altruistic one. This was something to admire, to aspire to even. But ultimately, it was a thing of fiction. You couldn“t become a “Champion of the Oppressed”“ or be “warring on all criminals”“ like Batman. And would you want to, even if you could?

And almost as soon as the superheroes made their first appearance in the comic books, advertisements would appear that told you, you too can look like a superhero, be built like The Batman. And these ads told you that it was ok that you wanted to have this not “for society”“, but for your own selfish reasons. Remember the more athletic kids who would make fun of you for reading these silly comic books? The ones that beat you up or kicked sand in your face on the beach? Sure, they were stronger because the played football, played outside while you were reading your comic books, but if only they knew. If only the pretty girls knew, the ones that either ignored you, laughed at you or did not even know you existed. Often you felt like Clark Kent. He smiled ever so slightly when folks would push him around, or Lois Lane mocked him for being such a doormat, even questioning his manliness on occasion. Because she didn“t know his secret, that he in fact was the mighty Superman. With you, it was your smarts. But if only you could have a body like a superhero (and for the girls who were not asked out to the dance, like one of the superheroines)! Let“s be honest, when looking at these superheroes and superheroines, do you not admire how they are built? Today, there is push-back, with words like “body shaming”“ being used to tell you, it“s wrong to strive towards an unrealistic ideal, to even think of it as an ideal, but Superheroes and superheroines do not only have superpowers. Batman, Superman and The Phantom Lady are what the Ancient Greeks thought their gods must look like. They are impossibly athletic and impossibly beautiful. They are semi-gods, in their powers, and in their attractiveness, that is nigh unattainable for us mortals. It feels plausible, natural even, that just armed with her athleticism and her beauty, a character like Pat Parker, the War Nurse, would go up against German tanks and Japanese submarines alike, while every enemy soldier inside those vehicles could only gape in awe at this apparition-like raven-haired woman, this pin-up goddess brought to life, who smashed their war machines and their faces indiscriminately.

But weren“t these men and women who gained superpowers or simply possessed a body that was made for a superhero outfit, very much like every jock and every homecoming queen at your school who just read the Cliffs-notes to every novel you bothered to read, and even used a cheat sheet? And wasn“t this how most of them did it, by cheating? Sure, The Batman worked hard apparently, for a total of just two panels mind you, but most of them did not. And nowhere in the early history of superhero comics does this come across more than in Captain America Comics No. 1 (1941). In “Meet Captain America”“ by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby we are introduced to a frail looking guy who got refused the very same day by the US Army “because of his unfit condition!”“. He very much looks like your typical bookish type; the kind girls would not give a second glance. But there is this fatherly scientist, Professor Reinstein, who looks all confident and inoculates this nerdy guy with a “the strange seething liquid”“, as he proclaims: “There, it is done! Now to watch the reaction”¦”“ And what a change there is to be witnessed. This guy puts on a ton of muscles in seconds. Not only this, but according to the professor, he also is getting smarter in the process: “Little does he realize that the serum coursing through his blood is rapidly building his body and brain tissues, until his stature and intelligence increase to an amazing degree!”“ And then we get to see this superhuman in his full glory as the professor explains “Behold! The crowning achievement of all my years of hard work!”“. Yes, you read that right. Professor Reinstein put in the hard work (and as a thanks gets shot on the very next page by a Nazi spy). The nerd, Steve Rogers, he just kinda showed up on that day and got rejected by the Army. Sure, we kinda learn that he volunteered since his chance to serve his country seemed gone. But that is all he did. And since this is not a Romance Comic (these were way off in the future, also by Simon and Kirby at first) but superhero comics, it works. We don“t see him hitting the gym for years to come, getting to work on a punching bag, while muttering all to himself “I“ll show them, sob, one day, I“ll show them all!”“ No, he just shows up and some other guy puts in the work. If this is not cheating, then what is? But the story does not end here. Of course not, this is comic books, remember? In the very same story we also meet Bucky, the mascot of Camp Lehigh, where the Captain is stationed under his civilian identity, sporting a pipe to indicate that he got hip once he has the right kind of physique and is a nerd no more. And as luck would have it (or the creators that is), Bucky quickly finds out that Private Steve Rogers is”¦ gosh”¦ Captain America! This of course means that from now on he is Cap“s partner, in fighting the powers of the Axis that is. So, yeah, Bucky also just shows up. To add insult, Bucky apparently did not need any superpowers. He was just healthy and fit like any jock at your school, and that already made him make the cut. This and knowing Steve Rogers was Captain America. Robin, Batman“s sidekick, who had appeared a year earlier was at least a trained acrobat when Batman took him under his cape so to speak. And Robin did get some training. Bucky just showed up. But then again, so did Steve Rogers. This was the kind of story you could only find in the superhero comics.

But then there were those ads, ads that had caught your attention because the guy in the picture looked a lot like Steve Rogers in that panel, after having been injected with Professor Reinstein“s secret serum. This was no comic book drawing, but an actual picture of a guy proudly showing off his mighty physique, only clad in the type of trunks Superman wore over his costume. He also looked like an adult version of those jocks at your middle school. But right there, in the headline, in bold, yellow letters against a bright red background, almost as if to replicate the color scheme of Superman“s famous shield symbol, he told you that he was you. You look at this picture of this semi-nude man with the body of a real superhero, only to do a double-take once you start reading the copy of the ad: “People used to laugh at my skinny, 97 lb. body. I was so embarrassed at my weakling build that I was ashamed to strip for sports or a swim. Girls snickered and made fun of me behind my back. THEN I discovered my marvelous muscle-building system ”“ ”˜Dynamic Tension.“ And it turned me into such a complete specimen of MANHOOD that today I hold the title ”˜The World“s Most Perfectly Developed Man.“ That“s how I traded in my bag of bones for a barrel of muscle!”“ So, yeah. This guy was you! But that sure sounded like a lot of work, many years of work in fact, like Professor Reinstein had put into perfecting this serum that had turned a nerd into the mighty Captain America. But then, the headline caption claimed: “Give me 15 minutes a day and I“ll give you a new body”“. No exclamation mark needed. And the ad copy itself explained that you could practice this method “in the privacy of your own room ”“ just 15 minutes each day ”“ while your scrawny shoulder muscles begin to swell”¦ those spindly arms and legs of yours bulge”¦ and your whole body starts to feel ”˜alive“, full of zip and go!”“ That sounded indeed marvelous. And best of all: you did not have to set foot into a gym where the stronger guys would make fun of you. Just 15 minutes a day! Who was this guy? The copy under his picture gives you his name in bold letters as only they would befit a man of this huge stature: CHARLES ATLAS. And the text would reinforce what he had told you in the ad copy by repeating it: “Holder of title The World“s Most Perfectly Developed Man.”“ That and his pictured told you all that you needed to know. But you could even send away for a book about his method. He offered you proof, and it was even for free. All you needed to do was to mail in the coupon on the same page. You didn“t know of course, that Charles Atlas was born Angelo Siciliano, an Italian-American bodybuilder who had in fact built his new, muscular body from that of a “scrawny weakling”“, thus becoming the most popular bodybuilder of his time. By the time he was thirty years old, he was so popular that he began to market his own method under his adopted name. And while he claimed that the ads, that by the late 1930’s did start to look like pages from a comic book, from superhero comic books to be specific, were based on his own experiences (he was the “97-pound weakling”“, who got sand kicked in his face by a much more athletic, stronger guy, as featured later in his famous advertisement “The Insult That Made A Man Out Of Mac”“), two other ads, (“Hey Skinny!”“ and “The Insult That Turned ”˜Chump“ Into A Champ”“) featured a scene that highly resembles a sequence of panels in the first Superman story (Action Comics No. 1) in which Clark, out on a date with Lois, gets shoved out of the picture by a bigger man, who places a hand right in Clark“s face. Not punching him, just pushing him aside while making a pass at his date. Lois“ reaction to Clark“s inability (or unwillingness) to stand up for himself, is the same that the young men“s dates show in those advertisements, ads whose imagery must have been extremely familiar to the readers of comic books at that time. The women scold them, not the bully, but their date, for being such a weak coward. Lois does leave in a huff, of course. So, you were either born with superpowers, had some nifty invention at your disposal or you were Captain America. In any case, you did not need to invest a lot of time or work into becoming a superhero. Batman needed but one panel to train his body to perfection. So yeah, superheroes were cheating. But here was Charles Atlas to let you know, that this was perfectly alright. That you could cheat, too. And don“t you worry about this “to the benefit mankind”“ business. It was ok that you did it for your own selfish reason. To prove to your girl that you were a regular he-man!

So, superheroes tell you how to cheat! And that it is ok. Well, in their case, they at least had a mission which made it ok and made them heroes. But so had you. Only on a very personal scale. But not so fast! Remember: Batman trained his body and his mind. And Professor Reinstein“s serum made the Captain much smarter (an interesting detail that is often left out when retelling the story of his transformation). Maybe there is more to this superhero business than just getting superpowers and going after the bad guys? Admittedly not that much more in the late 30’s and 40’s when the Charles Atlas ads began to run in the superhero comics. But what about the Superheroes that survived the change in readers tastes after the war, and those heroes who began to appear at the beginning of the Atomic Age? They would teach you, that muscles did not make the hero. Neither did looking great for your date. Even Phantom Lady, who immediately looked like a pin-up model once Matt Baker started to pencil her adventures in 1947, was a detective like The Batman. These stories showed her as extremely capable and resourceful, more so than in earlier issues. Her eroticism was heightened to the extreme, but so were her detective skills which were shown as much more advanced than those of the police. In her civilian identity, Sandra Knight might flirt with some shady guys to gain information, but once in her (albeit tiny) costume, she was all business. Yes, she was athletic, but she was also smart. So were the new heroes that began to appear in DC Comics. The Martian Manhunter, who adopted the identity of a detective. The Flash, who presented a new leaner body type, clad his skintight, sleek red outfit. He was a police scientist and very much an ordinary middle-class guy who liked science. His adventures were very much about his smarts, as they were about his super-speed. The books even offered “Flash Facts”“ to educate the young readers. Hawkman and Hawkgirl were re-invented as police officers from outer space. And these two helped the police in their adopted hometown on Earth. Hal Jordan, the new Green Lantern, was a jet pilot. These were the men and women of the Atomic Age. They were ordinary and special at the same time. Heroes and heroines of society even before they had superpowers. Their powers were just an extension of the personality all of them already possessed. They were not the supergods of “The Golden Age”“, they were not the Champions of the Oppressed. You could be one of them. You did not need Charles Atlas to do so. You could be a detective, a police officer, a scientist or a jet pilot. You could grow up to be a hero.

And be sure to come back next Wednesday, when we“ll find out that “With great power there comes”¦ greater selfishness”“. Yes, you guessed it, Tiger, this one will be about Spidey. See you all in seven days!

Author Profile

Chris Buse (RIP)

A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.