Off Panel Discussion 1: Us and Them

Not Happening

In the coming weeks, this blog will host a feature called Off Panel Discussion. My readers are invited to be part of the "off" Panel. A blog post from me to the universe will start the week, and end with a question. Then a wrap up at the end of the week will amalgamate all of the great answers that poured in. The first week starts now. The topic is how superheroes stand in relation to the real world. The question appears at the end of the post.

It's a tale we all have heard. The superhero era was born with Action #1. A look inside to the third feature showed the excited youth of the Great Depression a champion of justice who donned his distinctive suit and used his amazing powers to fight evil doers. Of course, I am thinking of Zatara. But the kids who read the issue in sequence had already discovered Superman.


About twenty years into the comic book experience, creators started spicing up superhero stories with foils who were very obviously patterned to be a variation of the starring character. Bizarro. The Reverse Flash. Thousands of Green Lanterns. Supergirl. Batwoman. Right through to the numerous variant Batmen in Grant Morrison's current run.

Bizarro Is Not Surprised To Meet His Double

What I find interesting about this is that superheroes are in the first place a very strange variant on everybody real. If we consider Superman to be a basic inspiration for all the others, then the explosion of new superheroes in 1938-1941 had already produced numerous variants on the concept. What is it that makes comic book readers (and of course writers) wonder what other variants would look like? The odd thing about inventing Bizarro to give Superman an "opposite" is that Superman already had in Action #1 a double who was his opposite: Clark Kent. Heroic fiction long ago found out that it's more exciting to see a hero come onstage than to have him stand onstage all the time. You can see a reluctant or waylaid hero return to take the field in the homeric Iliad and Odyssey, and the same setup prevails in The Dark Knight Returns. Thanks to Clark Kent, the writer had an excuse to show Superman emerging triumphantly rather than just standing there and being great all of the time.

But with every reading of Action #1, there was another Superman-opposite: The person whose two hands were holding the issue up. In fact, Clark Kent was not just a place from which Superman could emerge, the way that Achilles emerged from his tent. Clark was also a surrogate for us. Jerry Siegel said, "...in one of his identities, [Superman] could be meek and mild, as I was, and wear glasses, the way I do." Clark couldn't get the woman patterned on the girl that Siegel couldn't get. She's after Superman.

In a verbal essay in the movie Kill Bill: Volume 2, Bill famously says that Superman is the real man and Clark Kent is the disguise (which matches Siegel's description) and that Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race. But the last part isn't true. Clark Kent is Jerry Siegel's portrayal of himself. Superman is what Jerry Siegel dreamed of becoming, and he shared that dream with us.

And so, the real opposite figure for a superhero is not another superhero or even a supervillain, but any one of us. I was impressed, though, with some of the comments to my last post, wherein people mentioned the inspirational value of superheroes. And, so, the question:

Off Panel Discussion Question #1: What person in the real world is most like a superhero?

Answers, please -- lots of them! All of the comments here are visible to one and all, and I'm sure they will be excellent. Then I'll post again at the end of the week to provide a wrap-up discussing your answer. Leave your answer in the comments and be the hero of Off Panel Discussion #1!