Some Literary Criticism

Yeah, I know that it's all about comic books, but Lampert's piece is an interesting work of literary criticism nonetheless. And in case you've been living under a rock (or on another continent, which is essentially the same thing), Captain America died. You can read about that here.

This is the comic series that Lampert is writing about


Civil War and Reconstruction
Sequential Politics #2
by Matt Lampert
www.sequart.com
8 Apr 2007 at 1:02 EST

So Marvel's Civil War has ended, and—one presumes—a period of Reconstruction is at hand. Captain America is dead (for now), and Iron Man is the head of an explicitly governmental branch of "heroes." And even for those of us less than fully satisfied with the story told in the series, it is clear that the event itself has been a long time coming. Allow me a brief detour:

There was an interesting panel—or non-panel, perhaps—at the recent New York Comic Con: A one-hour panel featuring Bill Sienkiewicz, Brian Bolland, Walter Simonson, and Rick Veitch, set to discuss "The 80s Superhero Renaissance," began with none of the scheduled artists in attendance. Though Simonson finally arrived, to scattered applause, about forty minutes into the panel, for the majority of the time it was up to bewildered moderator Peter Sanderson (comics historian and co-author of the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe) to cover, play for time, and riff on the would-be panel's discussion topic. Fortunately, Sanderson has just recently come off of his successful lecture series at MoCCA, "1986: The Year That Changed Comics," so he was well-equipped to set the stage for the discussion that never happened.

Though we never got to hear the different perspectives of the artists who lived through the period (indeed, even Simonson's brief stay was filled simply with anecdotes from his legendary run on Thor—mostly a retelling of his introduction to the 2000 trade paperback collection—rather than any prolonged reflection on the major themes of that era), Sanderson rose to the challenge admirably in those first forty minutes, discussing the varying themes in 80s superhero comics which have proven most important for the generation that has followed. Of course, the central focus of this discussion was the year with which Sanderson is so familiar: 1986. More specifically, the focus was on two series which came out in 1986: Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. Sanderson follows in a line of comics historians and critics in identifying both books with a trend he calls the "Deconstructionist Approach." However, what Sanderson and most other commentators miss is exactly what in the late-80s paradigm shift was "deconstructionist," and perhaps even what was "deconstructed." Sanderson and others identify this "deconstructionist" school with the move toward a more violent, gritty form of storytelling; this change is marked by an article on Wikipedia as the emergence of the "anti-hero." And while it is undeniable that the deconstruction of the superhero in the late 80s did in fact see a rise of gritty, anti-hero comics (and the pinnacle of this fallout, the nigh-unbearable "bad girl" genre epitomized by Chaos! Comics and others), this alone does not amount to a "deconstruction" of the genre. Indeed, left to itself, it merely represents an expansion of the genre (albeit one which proved to be fertile ground for bad writing and splash-page heavy artwork). So what was it that was "deconstructed" in the late 80s, and how?

It's a theme I should spend more time on in another essay—I still want time to talk about Civil War, after all—but the long and short of it is this: in Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons deconstructed the myth of the superhero, as well as its necessary consequences. What the "superhero" (and, importantly, Moore includes a number of characters who are non-super in the traditional sense within this category) stands for, under Watchmen's critical gaze, is the "end justifies the means" logic at the heart of all so-called "just" violence. The haunting question from which the book receives its title—"Who watches the watchmen?"—cuts directly to the heart of the matter. When we give superheroes power to "watch over" us, we legitimate their lawless use of violence and sacrifice freedom for safety. Watchmen plays out in gripping detail the way in which "legitimate" violence of central authority—the world governments and, by the end of the book, the united "Superpowers" of the United States and the USSR—must be maintained by its opposite, the "illegitimate" violence of "superheroes" willing to do Whatever It Takes.

Meanwhile, The Dark Knight Returns nicely flips this logic to prove the same point from the opposite end. Where Superman has become but one more ultimate weapon in the arsenal of the corrupt American Government, Batman is the illegitimate violence of the outlaw hero, who will defy even the "legitimate" authority for the sake of safety and stability. It is no coincidence that Batman's henchmen by the end of the book are former thugs and gangsters: by wielding this brute violence for "the common good," Batman replays the same fantasy of benevolent fascism. Again, the passive populace is saved by someone willing to do Whatever It Takes in order to maintain the peace.

What is taken by so many as mere gritty, adult-oriented storytelling in the "deconstruction" period is thus something far deeper: the exposing of the fascist fantasy at the center of the superhero genre itself. In its very structure, this genre opts for safety over freedom, allowing a passive humanity to be protected by an illegitimate, external power willing to wield earth-shattering violence and do Whatever It Takes to maintain the peace. This movement is a deconstruction not because it introduces the anti-hero, but precisely because it reveals that the so-called "superhero" was always the anti-hero to begin with.

Which brings me back to Civil War. If what I have just said is true, then it is clear that this sort of conflict has been inevitable since the late 80s. That it has been so long delayed we can most likely attribute to two key factors: First, enough time has finally passed that the writers working today—and hence the brains behind Civil War—have grown up in this "post-deconstruction" period, and are thus fundamentally determined by the events of the 80s in a way their predecessors were not. Second, with the end of Reagan's presidency, the stage was set for a decade of willful forgetfulness in mass media. The resurfacing of these themes now, at the same point during the second coming of Ronald Reagan (and America's second Vietnam War), is the natural byproduct of a culture painfully reminded of its own specters. Allow me a moment to set up the two sides of the conflict:

On the one side, we have Iron Man, who represents the legitimization of "illegitimate" violence through the state appropriation of superheroes. That it should be Iron Man who represents this side comes as no surprise: Tony Stark is a weapons developer, who of course took on his alter-ego while helping the American war effort in Vietnam. Iron Man has thus always symbolized faith in the military-industrial complex, and a support of America as the world's policeman.

Captain America, meanwhile, is a beautiful choice for Stark's foil. Here is a man who was developed during World War II as yet another super-weapon in America's arsenal: his genesis is essentially the same as the atomic bomb. And, like the atomic bomb, the end of the war saw Cap put on ice for a period of "Cold War" with Russia (a counterpoint, we are retroactively told, to Russia's own "Winter Soldier"; the parallel is not to be missed). However, when he is thawed out, a problem ensues: what is the role of America's war-era weapon during the Cold War era? For a time, this tension builds as Steve Rogers (the only atomic bomb with a conscience) and the American government maneuver around each other. The crisis reaches its peak in the 80s (again, no surprises there), though, when Steve Rogers sheds the Captain America identity to become simply "The Captain." As is well-known, Rogers' return to the "Captain America" identity coincides with his realization that Captain America doesn't have to be yet another tool in the American military-industrial machine, but can instead be the living embodiment of America ideals.

The ideals for which America stands—is it possible to give a better example than Patrick Henry's famous demand, "Give me liberty, or give me death"?—have stood in various states of conflict with its realization on the stage of world politics throughout its short history (one could cite the 60s Civil Rights movement as simply one of the more explicit examples). But as the very logic of superheroes—the means of government-sponsored violence directed to the "benign" ends of world stability, and the sacrifice of freedom and self-determination for the sake of safety under the supervision of superior powers—has recently been openly challenged in relation to those ideals, the eventuality of Civil War has finally recently been overdetermined. And, given both the actual state of affairs in the world today, and the logic exposed by deconstructionism in the 80s at the heart of the superhero genre itself, there could be no other end than the death of Captain America at (literally) the hands of an agent under the employ of Tony Stark. And if that agent happened to have been brainwashed by a Nazi and a Soviet, then this is both a meek attempt at reviving the classic (simpler) struggles of old and a more solemn understanding that the ideals we so fiercely opposed at the heart of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes can—if unchecked—function just as readily through the very powers we trust to oppose them.

What, then, are we to say about post-Civil War Reconstruction? Interestingly, against the "Deconstructionist School," Peter Sanderson identifies a "Reconstructionist School," among them people like Darwin Cooke, Paul Dini, and Walter Simonson. These are people attempting to return the Silver Age feel of wonder and idealism to the superhero genre. And while this very often results in excellent stories (all three so-called "Reconstructionists" have given amazing contributions to the sequential art field), one cannot help but feel that this simple understanding of "reconstruction" is a little naïve. Certainly, if "deconstruction" had merely been a shift towards grim-and-gritty storytelling, "reconstruction" would be a simple matter of cleaning up language and brightening one's palette. But if deconstruction exposed a more sinister logic at the heart of the superhero genre itself, then Reconstruction could be just as long and painful an undertaking as its real-life historical counterpart.