A recent project I’ve been undertaking is putting full runs of comics I really enjoy, or runs that don’t have trade paperbacks, into nice displayable folders. Primarily, I wanted to do this so I could easily put them on a shelf without having to pull everything out just to check what it is (a problem I’ve had in the past when putting singles with paperbacks). I wasn’t happy using A4 folders and pocket inserts, so I’d essentially resigned myself to needing to save up for a comic binding service. A few weeks ago, I made the wonderful discovery of Dunwell Comic Album folders. They have 6 reinforced folders inside, sized specifically for comics (including bags and boards), and could easily have custom covers and spines inserted into them.
My first attempt was with the Green Lantern: Mosaic series. It’s by far my worst job with these as my sizing was incredibly off, but it means I got to use it as a learning curve. After a few attempts, I’ve finally finished a project I’ve been wanting for a while. Fitting into 4 folders, I’ve managed to collect and display the entirety of Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Action Comics run.
After some experimentation, I’ve finally found dimensions that fit the best for the folders and have created templates that I can now use for any folder project. To help anyone else who wants to do this in the future, these are the settings I use.
Cover:
On an A4 document, I create a rectangle at 2357 pixels wide and 3361 pixels high. I give it an outline colour that I know will not appear on the cover (currently a light red or blue) and make the outline a width of 21 pixels. When designing, I have a very clear boundary for what I know will safely appear on the cover and the thick outline makes it easier to cut the paper to size. If you have a guillotine, this is much easier.
Spine:
Same process as above, on an A4 document, I create a rectangle at 3361 pixels high and 819 pixels wide, with and outline at 21 pixels. You can fit two of these onto a page, so is ideal for making multiple volumes. As an extra guide, I create a second rectangle at 3361 pixels high and 409 pixels wide. This is then centred within the original rectangle to better design around the arc of the folder’s spine. Text should ideally be placed in the inner rectangle.
The shadow of Grant Morrison looms large over the character of Animal Man. Morrison’s 26 issue run with the character in the mid-80s brought newfound attention to the almost forgotten character, and left an expectation for the character moving forward. DC Comic’s New 52 initiative in 2011 sought to erase the previous continuity and give readers a new experience with familiar characters. However, even with continuity erased and an attempted fresh start, it’s hard to escape a character’s legacy. With Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man, we see both a reverence for the past, and an embracing of the future.
As Animal Man, Buddy Baker finds himself with a connection to The Red, the web of life that connects all animals and allows Buddy to draw abilities from different creatures. While he’s not the most popular hero, he has a loving family and a fledgling career in the movies. However, when The Red begins to leave strange markings on Buddy’s body, and his four-year-old daughter Maxine is capable of powers far greater than his own, Buddy finds that his powers are far more of a curse than a blessing.
Despite family being pivotal characters in previous Animal Man stories, Lemire puts them to the forefront far more than any other writer. This is especially shown with Buddy’s relationship to his children, the powerless Cliff Baker, and the Red Avatar Maxine Baker. With Cliff and Maxine, we see two different reactions to having a superhero parent, as well as the positives and negatives of inheriting said powers.
Maxine, despite her very young age, inherits a connection to The Red that is even stronger than that of her fathers. Born as the next Avatar of The Red, Maxine is capable of channelling The Red in ways her father never dreamed. Able to give consciousness to reanimated corpses of deceased pets, capable of regrowing her body using a passing animal, and the ability to travel to the Parliament of Limbs at the centre of The Red at will. Maxine inherits a massive responsibility just as The Red begins to turn on the Baker family. The Red exists in harmony with The Green and with The Rot, the embodiments of nature and decay. When one of these forces grows out of control and disrupts the harmony, it can cause catastrophic damage. At the point that Lemire’s run begins, The Rot has begun to take over due to the defection of three former avatars of The Red and by taking control of the new avatar, Maxine, they can overtake both The Red and The Green. The series becomes an escape from the Rot with Maxine at the centre. Maxine embraces her powers and sees them as a way to help the world and form a closer bond with her animal friends. However, given that she is only four years old, the immense power and responsibility now placed onto this child becomes an intense source of stress and worry for Buddy and his wife. Ellen has watched her husband come back from hero work with wounds and having just escaped near death situations, now she needs to worry about her daughter entering this world and being put into extreme danger just by existing. This is compounded to Ellen when she watches Maxine’s body get ripped apart by Rot infested wild dogs. While Maxine is capable of recreating her own body within a matter of seconds, no parent ever wants to see such a horrific act, much less to a four-year-old. Despite the danger, Maxine faces The Rot with a brave face and with her family at the centre of her concerns.
Cliff’s perspective of the events differs greatly from his younger sisters, however. Cliff comes across as very cynical, focusing on his phone and passively arguing with his parents. However, this cynical exterior hides a very hopeful but disillusioned little boy. Cliff looked up to his father when he got his Animal Man powers, thinking the powers were amazing. However, when Maxine shows those same abilities, its clear that Cliff feels like the lesser child and is using his cynical attitude as a cover up. While on the run, Cliff uses the remaining battery power of his phone to watch a film his father stars in. A film that centres around a former superhero trying to reconnect and earn the respect of his estranged son. It’s clear that Cliff sees this film as an allegory for his own relationship with his father. Cliff wants to be seen as important in his father’s eyes, and dreams of being able to help him, to make his father proud. But as Maxine’s importance to the universe is explored, Cliff becomes a background character in his own life. Despite this, Cliff does try to break out of being the ‘dead weight child’ and at the climax of the stories second act, its shown that despite his lack of powers Cliff might actually have been the most heroic of the two children. Giving his life so that his family could carry on.
The final arc deals with the death of Cliff from multiple family member’s perspective as well as an avatar of The Red deciding to take control as they wish to shift the balance in the Red’s favour. This twist in the Red itself becoming the enemy, paired with the loss of Cliff feels like a parent’s defiance against a world that took their son away. This final arc acts as the stories biggest meta-narrative component and brings Lemire’s story to an earned conclusion.
The concept of conclusions in on-going serial superhero comics typically refers to the ending of a storyline, such as a major event or story arc. However, media adaptations of these narratives are capable of providing a different form of conclusion, namely, the conclusion of character myth. This paper seeks to highlight a fundamental difference between the superhero narrative surrounding death in superhero comics and on the big screen. To do so, the death of the MCU’s depiction of Iron Man, as played by Robert Downey Jr, in 2019s Avengers: Endgame (Russo & Russo.2019) will be compared to the 1993 comic book death of Superman. Public reactions to these deaths will be discussed, as well as the wider concept of narrative mythology.
The concept of death in fiction provides what Segal notes as a ‘textual termination point’ (Segal. 2010:155). When discussing the serial superhero narrative in Death, Disability, and the Superhero (Alaniz.2014), Alaniz refers to the superhero narrative as ‘an erasure of ordinary mortal flesh in favour […] of [the] ideal’ (Alaniz.2014:158). As such, the concept of death in early superhero fiction largely remains a consequence of evil doers with the hero escaping unscathed. The silver age of comics did see a rise in superhero stories related to death, however, these were related to ‘what if’ or ‘imaginary’ tales. By the 1990s, this had changed with non-villain deaths becoming relatively common. The 1962 origin story for Spider-Man in Amazing Fantasy #15 (Lee & Ditko.1962) included the death of Peter Parker’s kind Uncle Ben. In 1973, the then girlfriend of Peter Parker, Gwen Stacy, falls from the Brooklyn Bridge, only to have her neck snapped when Spider-Man attempts to save her. Finally, the 1980s saw the death of two crime fighting heroes, Mar-Vell, the original Captain Marvel in 1982s The Death of Captain Marvel (Starlin.1982), and Jason Todd, the second Robin, in 1988s Batman #428 (Starlin and Aparo.1988), both written by Jim Starlin. By 1990s, a precedent had been set for death to affect heroes in superhero comic books.
However, these deaths related to the consequences of stories, and do not primarily feature major, high selling, superheroes. This changes in 1993 with the death of Superman in Superman #75 (Jurgens et al. 1993). As a horrifying creature begins to rampage towards metropolis, Superman attempts to stop it, aided by the Justice League. But as the creature, dubbed Doomsday by Booster Gold, appears to grow stronger. The final blows end with the deaths of both Doomsday and Superman, who takes his final breaths in the arms of Lois Lane. The death of Superman became an event in itself, with news outlets across America reporting on the death of the very first superhero (Darowski.2012:167). The heroes of the DC Universe mourned the death of Superman just as the real world did. However, while the heroes of the DC Universe reacted sincerely to their friend’s death, the real world considered the business side of things. As Darowski notes, ‘Entrepeneur.com named “The Death of Superman” one of the Top 10 successful marketing stunts of all time. [with] Christopher Knowles refer[ing] to the story as a “cynical … publicity stunt” (Darowsky.2012:167). Rozanski, an operator for one of the largest comic book retailers at the time, called it ‘the greatest catastrophe to strike the world of comics since the Kefauver Senate hearings of 1955’ (Darowski.2012:167). The Kefauver Senate hearings being responsible for the mass censorship and demonisation of comic books, post-World War II.
Reactions to the Death of Superman greatly varied amongst readers, as reflected through the letter’s page. In Action Comics #689 (Stern & Guice.1993), one reader berates the storyline stating, ‘Stupid, how can we believe a story where Superman is dead? […] Superman should come out of his self-imposed sleep in SUPERMAN #76. He has had tougher fights lots of times. […] We heard some nonsense about four Supermen coming in March. Come on. You made one giant, stupid mistake. Don’t compound it. […] If this isn’t straightened out in two weeks, I’ll be ashamed to admit that I read DC Comics’ (Lane.1993:1).
In contrast, another letter from the very next issue comments that, ‘When [they] heard about DC’s plan to kill off Superman, [they] didn’t believe it at first. When it was confirmed, [they were] intrigued. Finally, Superman faces mortality. It seemed more than just an “obligatory must-read”, and it certainly was. Each instalment of “Doomsday” built in suspense as the number of panels decreased, emphasizing the solemn importance of the Man of Steel’s date with destiny’ (Gonyo.1993:1).
In conversation with Mike Carlin, the former editor of the Superman titles at DC, Carlin commented on the shear amount of post and the ratio of positive to negative post printed in the letter’s column for the Superman titles. ‘Obviously there was a big reaction when SUPERMAN died, not only in the regular comic reading audience… but in the outside world, as well […]. This also makes it a tough reality to gage – especially just looking at reader mail. […] The reality is that the letters pages were part of the package. Used to promote what was working in the series… either the stories of the talent. But they weren’t ever not basically part of the propaganda for the series. So, people generally sent in positive notes because it was easy to see that we’d prefer printing thumbs up rather than thumbs down. We did run negative letters… but they were a lesser percentage for sure. Maybe one negative to three or four positive’ (Carlin.2023).
The Death of Superman struck a nerve with both the comic reading audience and the general public, however, many readers and the public expressed direct knowledge that Superman would return, and that this was clearly a financial stunt. This is backed up by the writers responsible for the four Superman issues. As chronicled in both the Superman | Doomsday – Requiem & Rebirth documentary (Warner Bros Entertainment.2012) and the chapter ‘Searching for Meaning in the Death of Superman’ by Darowski, ‘in frustration, one of the writers is said to have called out in a creative meeting, “let’s just kill ‘m!” as a means of preventing Superman from marrying Lois for one year. The idea actually took hold. Obviously the plan would be for Superman to return and marry Lois, but in the meantime they could tell an event story about Superman’s death and resurrection’ (Darowski.2012:168). The one-year delay was necessary due to the currently running television series also planning a wedding between Superman and Lois. DC wanted these events to coincide as publicity for the television series, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (LeVine.1993-1997). Superman is a product of superhero comics, and one that exists in a long running serial narrative, Superman was meant to come back; the entire event was created as a means to delay another event that required Superman to be alive once again. At the story’s conclusion, Superman would return to his status quo, once again flying high above Metropolis, and fighting crime along with other members of the Justice League. Indeed, this is exactly what the general public saw. Between March and October of 1993, the Superman titles chronicled the four figures seeking to claim the mantle of Superman, Mongul’s attack on Earth, the destruction of Coast City, and finally the true Superman returning ‘from the dead’ to regain his mantle and defeat Mongul.
The ‘death and return’ narrative in comics has become an archetypical story trope in superhero comics, one which sees many notable heroes die, only to come back. After The Death and Return of Superman, many superheroes have succumbed to their supposed ultimate fate, including the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord (Johns et al.2005), The Elongated Man, Ralph Dibney (Morrison et al.2007), Wolverine (Soule & McNiven.2014), Batman, Bruce Wayne (Morrison & Mahkne.2009), Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff (Spencer & Sorrentino.2017), Captain America, Steve Rodgers (Brubaker & Epting. 2007), and the Hulk, Bruce Banner (Bendis & Marquez.2016), all of which have since returned from the dead. This is to say nothing of the current state of the X-Men books, which revolves around the continued cycle of death and resurrection available to mutant kind. Alaniz comments that ‘mainstream superhero [comics] seem to experience the “death/resurrection” cycle more routinely than characters in other genres […] and with accelerating frequency (Alaniz.2015:159). This has often been criticised by both fans and industry veterans alike, Ta-Nehisi Coates, a long-time comic writer of both Black Panther and Captain America has stated ‘at some point brand degradation kicks in. If you’re going to kill main characters, only to resurrect them later, why should we care in the first place?’ (Coates.2009).
Twenty-Six years later, another superhero death would make the news, this time, one experienced by far more, and with perhaps a greater cultural significance. This would be the 2019 death of Iron Man in Avengers: Endgame. The death comes as the culmination of the third phase of films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After the mad titan Thanos disintegrates half of life across the universe, and destroying the Infinity Stones. The Avengers travel through timelines to retrieve Infinity Stones to undo Thanos’s destruction. In the process, a Thanos from the past has come to do what his older self could not, and completely destroy the Avengers. A grand battle between the Avengers, the resurrected heroes, and Thanos’s forces unravels, culminating in Iron Man using the 6 Infinity Stones to destroy Thanos and his army, but at the cost of Iron Man’s own life. The film culminates in Tony Stark’s funeral as the rest of the heroes pay their respects before venturing out into this brave new world. Tony Stark, Iron Man, was the first hero audiences were introduced to as part of the MCU. As Carbone states in a Cinema Blend article, ‘Tony Stark initiated the MCU with Iron Man in 2008. Watching him learn how to be selfless, ending with his sacrifice that saved the universe – it was a beautiful thing to behold. Heart breaking. But beautiful and very much earned’ (Carbone.2019). The reaction to Iron Man’s death received a greater reaction than Superman’s, but with a far more positive outcome. The concept of this positive reaction is more impressive given the sheer difference between the audience sizes.
The first Iron Man (Favreau.2008) film in 2008 made $585.8 Million at the box office, with the average ticket price in 2008 being $7.18, this means approximately over 81 Million people was the film in theatres. Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo.2018) made $2.052 Billion at the box office, with the average ticket price in 2018 being $9.11, this means approximately over 225 million people saw the film in theatres. Avengers: Endgame made $2.799 Billion at the box office, with the average ticket price in 2019 being $9.16, this means approximately over 305 million people saw it in theatres. These figures do not consider home streaming, pirating, or Blu-ray copies.
In contrast with comics, Superman #75 sold approximately 6 million copies, this could be seen as 6 million people reading the issue at launch, though it is reported that people brought multiple copies due to the polybag variants. To put this into perspective, the highest selling comic of all time, 1991s X-Men #1 (Claremont & Lee.1991), sold approximately 8.108 million copies. It’s clear from this data, that superhero films are more profitable, but above all, are seen by more people than their comic book counterparts.
The immense audience brought to a superhero narrative differs greatly from the solely comic book audience. The difference between the two mediums can be seen in the building of an on-going narrative. With comic books, you have new additions to a universe being added week by week. One that has lasted 85 years for DC Comics, and 62 years for Marvel. In the case of the MCU films however, you have a maximum of three films per year between Iron Man, and the last film of the third phase, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Watts.2019). Something far more digestible and manageable than years of weekly and monthly comics. However, the nature of the films being in live action, with real actors taking on the mantle of these heroes, provides a real-world sense of time passing, something superhero comics are not beholden to.
Being a live action film has its draw backs when it comes to closing a character’s mythology. A prime example of this would be with the MCU’s Black Panther, portrayed by Chadwick Boseman. Sadly, Boseman passed away in 2020 at the young age of 43 due to colon cancer. This unforeseen event put the MCU in a difficult position given King T’Challa had just returned from the Blip and was ready to carry on as both the King of Wakanda, and the superhero Black Panther. The character was beloved and seen as a cultural icon, however with the death of Boseman, the directors and writers are now faced with the problem of either re-casting, or to retire this incarnation of the character in a way that does not include Boseman. This is a case where the conclusion of myth is restricted, as they are torn between honouring the beloved actor and continuing the character. This could be seen as a limitation of live action superhero storytelling, but also, as a necessity to plan and acknowledge the need to close myths.
With cinema, the problem of when to kill off a character, and the expectation of resurrection can be sidestepped by now needing to embrace closure in the superhero myth. Closure in myth allows for a satisfying and complete narrative, grounding fantastical elements of the superhero narrative in a stark reality, that death is a real situation as it is in the real world and that heroes can die. As Sarah Gilead states in her paper, ‘Magic Adjured: Closure in Children’s Fantasy’ (Gilead.1991), ‘in one sense, the return-to-reality closure asserts the conventional ideologically mandated meaning and indeed relations between the concept pairs, “child” and “adult”, “fantasy” (or “dream”) and “reality” (Gilead. 1991:288). Through this act of narrative closure, Avengers: Endgame, and particularly the character of Iron Man, the saga also finds itself engaging in the comic book practice of braiding. A term created by comic book theorist Thierry Groensteen to describe the ‘operation that manages the type of relationship that is not restricted to breakdown’ (Groensteen.2022:40). This describes the temporal and logical relationship at the beginning and end of a sequence. With Iron Man, we see this in both his statement to the press at the beginning of his superhero career in 2008s Iron Man, and his declaration to the mad titan Thanos at his superhero career’s end in 2019s Avengers: Endgame. ‘I am Iron Man’ (Favreau.2008) (Russo & Russo.2019).
As Segal states in Closure in Detective Fiction (Segal.2010), ‘there is a widespread tendency to conflate [closure] with ending, whereas […] it is important to differentiate between the two. […] What do we mean by saying that a narrative (text) has “ending”? It may be simply that the tale has reached its termination point […] since every narrative text has to end somewhere. On the other hand, we might be referring to the sense of an ending […] not to the textual termination point itself but rather to a certain effect, or perceptual quality, produced by the text’ (Segal.2010:155). When we look at The Death of Superman, his death is the end of one story, but the beginning of the next. The consequences of Superman’s death are only briefly explored, before throwing the reader into the mystery of who the new Supermen are, and how will the real Superman return? Individual comics, regardless of how successful they are, do not make the same amount of money as a film. The continuing adventures of profitable characters are necessary for their parent companies to continue making money. With the death of Iron Man, his death is the culmination of his journey from a selfish, weapons dealing, narcissist, to a true hero who would sacrifice himself for the good of humanity. Iron Man has nowhere to go after this story, at least in terms of personal growth, his journey has reached a sad but satisfying conclusion that allows for the closure of his great mythology in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Despite existing as an adaptation of serial superhero comics, The Marvel Cinematic Universe can provide something by its very medium that serial superhero comics can, but will not provide. The ability to properly conclude an interpretation of a character. Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal of Iron Man is the definitive version for many comic readers and non-comic readers alike. Bringing a character inspired by sixty years of comic books, to perhaps his only definitive end.
Bibliography:
Alaniz, J. (2014) Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson.
Avengers: Endgame. (2019) Film. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. [Blu-Ray] Marvel Studios: USA.
Avengers: Infinity War (2018) Film. Directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. [Blu-Ray] Marvel Studios: USA.
Bendis, B. M. & Marquez, D. (2016) Civil War II #3. Marvel Comics: New York.
Conway, G. & Kane, G. (1973) Amazing Spider-Man v1 #121: The Night Gwen Stacy Died. Marvel Comics: New York.
Conway, G. & Kane, G. (1973) Amazing Spider-Man v1 #121: The Goblin’s Last Stand! Marvel Comics: New York.
Darowski, J. (2012) ‘Searching for Meaning in The Death of Superman’. The Ages of Superman. Essays on the Man of Steel in Changing Times. McFarland: New York.
Gilead, S. (1991) Magic Adjured: Closure in Children’s Fantasy Fiction. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, pp. 277-293.
Gonyo, T. (1993) Action Comics 690 – Letters Page. DC Comics: Burbank.
Groensteen, T. (2022) Braiding. Key Terms in Comics Studies. Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland.
This past weekend, we had the 7th Superhero Project Conference. This year saw us tackle the 15 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a series of papers that truly highlights the versatility of Superhero studies. While the first day of the conference took place in the Burlington Hotel, our primary venue was the stunning Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex. This was an absolutely breathtaking venue for the conference, which excites the imagination. The rich nature of the environment matched the creativity and depth of the papers presented by the delegates.
On the first day, we had papers discussing narrative, family, and the negotiation of character arcs through the MCU. This included the concept of literal family, such as the various Guardians and their dysfunctional relationships with their parents and siblings, to the metaphorical parentage as seen with Iron Man and Spider-Man. Everything from the main films to the Disney + series is explored. The papers were of an extremely high quality, and while there were some technological issues with the venue, it did not take away from just how compelling these papers were.
The second day saw us at the Castle, where the four panels covered were on semiotics, femininity, Muslim representation, and Kevin Feige. A real standout here was the session specifically focused on Ms Marvel and Muslim representation, presented by three incredibly talented Muslim women. While speaking as an agnostic, and one with a very surface level understanding of the Muslim faith, this was an extremely educational and entertaining set of talks. The second day concluded fantastically with a collective BBQ on the castle grounds.
The final day saw two panels focused on disability and culture wars in the MCU. While this was the shortest day, these papers were just as fascinating as others and brought the conference to an incredible close.
What made this conference possibly the best we’ve had yet, is that no paper felt out of place. Everything and everyone brought concepts and ideas that showed just how amazing superhero studies and the MCU can be, particularly when it comes to discussing such amazing concepts. While Super 7 might be over all too soon, Super 8 has a lot to live up to.
As a character, Jon Kent was born with tremendous potential. The son of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, Jonathan Samuel Kent gave Superman a brand-new perspective on his life’s mission. We saw this masterfully handled in both Superman: Lois and Clark by Dan Jurgens and Lee Weeks, and the 2016 to 2018 Superman run by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason. When Brian Michael Bendis took over the Superman titles in 2018, he made the controversial decision to age Jon up from 10 to around 17 years old. While this was, and still is, a decision that divided the Superman readership, it did provide one detail that could be called back upon for some incredibly interesting storytelling. The years spent being tortured by an alternate universe version of his father.
This plot point had been alluded to every so often, but the more it was alluded to, the more readers wanted to see Jon deal with this tremendous trauma. With the announcement of Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent, this is what we were promised. Ultraman is travelling through the multiverse and killing other incarnations of Superman, and its up to Jon Kent to face his fears and stop Ultraman from killing his father. Coming off of Superman: Son of Kal-El, Tom Taylor seemed like a good fit to explore this story. Taylor’s 18 issue run with the character explored Jon’s dating life, the responsibility of taking on the role of Superman, and even taking on the dictator of a country. Taylor has a decent grasp of the character, and has shown a strong desire to explore character flaws in past works. When the series was being promoted, Taylor teased the big twist of Adventure of Superman: Jon Kent, one that readers had not yet guessed. The return of the Injustice universe.
This should have been a red flag immediately. The concept of Jon having to face his biggest fear in a 6-issue series should have been enough content for a truly compelling story. However, this is abandoned in the second issue in favour of a fan favourite writer returning to the Injustice universe. The Injustice comic books act as an extension of the video games under the same name, a world in which Superman has become a global dictator after the deaths of Lois Lane and their unborn child. By the end of the second issue of Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent, the Injustice version of Superman ‘saves’ Jon by snapping Ultraman’s neck. From here, the remaining four issues become Jon exploring the Injustice universe.
Had the Injustice comics never existed, this would be a fascinating exploration of the Injustice universe, and a future Superman seeing what happens if he used his power to control the world. However, this is a concept that had been explored extensively in the Injustice series, which Tom Taylor wrote a vast majority of. The only additions to the Injustice universe that Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent brings, is a brief ‘Super Sons’-like conversation between Jon and Injustice Damian, and the introduction of Injustice’s own Jay Nakamura.
The essential core of what was promised, is swapped out for a different ‘evil’ Superman, and a tone-deaf retread of Taylor’s own Superman: Son of Kal-El run, in which Jon attempts to take down a dictator. For this, the reader is given a mindless recap of Taylor’s greatest hits, for the price of 6-issues. Tom Taylor has, and does produce fantastic stories, including the currently running Dark Knights of Steel, and the previously mentioned Injustice comics. It’s clear to see from the final page of the series just what Taylor is going for. That as Superman it would be all too easy to use your power to control the world. However, was this a lesson Jon needed to learn through the Injustice Superman? Wouldn’t Ultraman be enough to show Jon what corrupted power truly is, while giving the truly personal touch of fighting Jon’s own nightmare and past trauma.
As a whole story, Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent begins with a shining premise, and one that is sure to bring a great amount of emotional depth to Jon Kent. By the end, we are left with Jon having learnt nothing, and his defining conflict in his young life, now taken away from him in favour of hugging an alternate universe dictator. While the hug does show Jon’s compassionate side, it comes off as a moment done solely to surprise the reader and nothing more. By the series end, we have learnt nothing. Nothing has changed, and the single lesson Jon could learn, is spoon fed to him on the final page. The series momentum and promise died two issues in with the snapping of Ultraman’s neck. Jon Kent, you deserve better.
The narrative within superhero media can and has explored a variety of concepts, from weighted stories of grief and loss to light-hearted material focused on bombastic action. This freedom allows for creators to discuss superhero narratives as a form of superhero narrative. This can be viewed as a meta-narrative, a term which Waugh describes as a ‘fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality’ (Waugh.1984:2). Essentially, this can be described as a narrative that comments on its own nature as a narrative.
Types of meta-narratives in comics have been defined three times. First is by M. Thomas Inge in 1995 (Igne.1995), the second by Matthew Jones in 2005 (Jones.2005), and thirdly by Roy Cook in 2012. Each of these figures builds upon the previous one. Inge, in their book Anything Can Happen in a Comic Book: Centennial Reflections on an American Art Form (Igne.1995), discusses three categories of meta-fiction in newspaper comic strips can fall into. The first is the crossover, the appearance of a character from one strip in another. The second is a strip paying tribute, or parody, to another comic strip either through reference or by imitation of their style. Finally, a comic strip using the technical conventions of the medium to explore the process of its own making, such as the boarders, panels, placement of dialogue etc. (Inge.1995:11-12).
Jones expands upon these in his chapter ‘Reflexivity in Comic Art’ (Jones.2005), though discussing comic books rather than specific newspaper strips. Jones names each of his five categories to distinguish them. The first is ‘Authorial Awareness’, a comic the inserts the author into their comic. The second, ‘Demystification’, in which a comic reveals the production involved in the creation of the comic. Third ‘Reader Awareness’, comics that draw attention to the reader as a spectator, i.e., acknowledging the reader. Fourth ‘Intertextuality, a comic that references multiple comics, stories, or works. Intertextuality is also a form of semiotics dependent on recognising signs related to other comics, stories, or works. Finally, ‘Intermedia reflexivity’, a comic that representers another medium and involves the use of images or content from another medium, such as photographs.
Cook, in his chapter ‘Why Comics are not Films: Metacomics and Medium-Specific conventions’ (Cook.2012), expands upon this again, now applying the term metacomic, and identifying six categories of meta-narrative. The first is the ‘Narrative metacomic’, a story that involves the production, consumption, or collection of comics, a natural progression of Jones’s ‘Demystification’. The second ‘Self-Aware metacomics’, where the protagonist is aware they are in a comic, a somewhat expansion of Jones’s ‘Reader Awareness’ category. The third is ‘formal metacomics’, a comic that involves the formal manipulation of the conventions of the comic medium, such as augmenting boarders, panels, and dialogue. Fourth is the ‘Intertextual comic’, a comic whose story interacts with other texts or artwork. This is distinguished from the fifth category ‘Cameo metacomics’, a comic story that interacts with characters, locations or elements that are not in the same continuity. Finally, Cook describes the ‘Authorial metacomic’, a comic that involves the appearance of the writer, artist, or other creators as a character in the comic (Cook.2012:175).
Both Cook and Jones comment that neither of these lists are extensive, and that there are likely examples of meta-narratives in comics that can not neatly fit into those listed. But it is possible to identify examples of the ones above. The 2008 to 2012 manga, Bakuman (Ohba & Obata.2008-2012) can be seen as a narrative metacomic due to its plot revolving around the creation and attempted success of manga within the industry. Both John Byrne’s The Sensational She-Hulk run, and modern Deadpool comics would fall into the self-aware metacomic category, due to characters in both examples acknowledging their existence in a comic book, and particularly Deadpool acknowledging the reader. An intertextual comic, as described by Cook, could apply to both DC and Marvel, such as having Daredevil appear in a Spider-Man book, Superman popping in during a Batman issue. By this logic, a cameo metacomic would include Marvel vs DC, such as JLA/Avengers (Busiek & Perez.2004). For Authorial metacomics, a core example of this would be Animal Man #26: Deus Ex Machina (Morrison & Thruog.1990) by Grant Morrison and Chris Thruog. In this issue, Morrison writes himself into the story to talk with Animal Man.
Based on the definition for Authorial metacomics, its perhaps possible to take this definition further. In MISTER MIRACLE – A Love Letter to Jack Kirby (Owen Likes Comics.2021), Farrington discusses the concept of a meta-narratives being used to discuss and celebrate the history of superhero comics, including the figures of the past that led to the medium’s creation. Farrington explores this through Mister Miracle (King & Gerads.2017-2020) by Tom King and Mitch Gerads as an example of a comic exploring a duel meta-narrative. Partly, the book discusses Scott Free’s feelings towards being mentally trapped, but in doing so, the book also reflects on the life and career of Scott Free’s real world creator, Jack Kirby.
A more recent example of a superhero meta-narrative comes in the form of the 2023s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Santos, Powers & Thompson.2023) film. While not an Authorial meta narrative in the sense of exploring the real-world creators and figures, the film instead acts as a meta narrative on the Spider-Man narrative as template. The origin and early stories of Peter Parker, become templates for later Spider-Man-like characters, such as Gwen Stacy (Ghost Spider) or Hobie Brown (Spider-Punk). The central conflict of Across the Spider-Verse comes from Miles Morales wanting to pull away from this perpetual cycle, and forge his own destiny. While the film acts as a defiant statement for Miles, wanting to be his own person, it also comments on the stagnation of creating Spider-Man-esc characters.
The superhero meta-narrative is a field prime for exploration, particularly in terms of narratives reflecting the medium’s history. The more work and stories that are told reflecting comics rich history, the more conversations the medium can engage in.
Bibliography:
Busiek, K. & Perez, G. (2004) JLA/Avengers. DC Comics/Marvel Comics: Burbank/New York.
Cook, R. (2012) Why Comics are not Films: Metacomics and Medium-Specific conventions. The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach. Wiley-Blackwell: London.
Cook, R. (2017) Metacomics. The Routledge Companion to Comics. Routledge: London.
Igne, M. T. (1995) Anything Can Happen in a Comic Book: Centennial Reflections on an American Art Form. University Press of Mississippi: Jackson.
Jones, M. (2005) Reflexivity in Comic Art. International Journal of Comic Art. Vol. 7 (1): Pg 270-286.
King, T. & Gerads, M. (2017-2019) Mister Miracle. DC Comics: Burbank.
Morrison, G. & Thruog, C. (1990) Animal Man #26: Deus Ex Machina. DC Comics: Burbank.
Morrison, G. & Quitely, F. (2005-2008) All-Star Superman. DC Comics: Burbank.
Ohba, T. & Obata, T. (2008-2012) Bakuman. Shueisha: Tokyo.
Owen Likes Comics (2020) ALL-STAR SUPERMAN – A Modern Masterpiece. [ONLINE] YouTube. May 7th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lImMy5jqeqk [Last Accessed: 06/06/2023].
Owen Likes Comics (2021) MISTER MIRACLE – A Love Letter to Jack Kirby (Documentary). [ONLINE] YouTube. June 24th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8XuwIHbbk&t=912s [Last Accessed: 06/06/2023].
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. (2023) Film. Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, & Justin K. Thompson. [4K] Sony Pictures Animation: USA.
The Superhero Project (2023) YouTube’s Passion for Superheroes ft. Comic Drake and Owen Likes Comics | Superhero Project Podcast. [Online] YouTube. June 5th. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBojZ-XaCmo [Last Accessed: 06/06/2023].
Waugh, P. (1984) Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. Routledge: London.
As Danny, Torsten, and Caleb are busy with work, Mikayla sits down with the wonderful Owen Farrington and Drake McWhorter! Owen, a fellow PhD researcher, runs and operates the YouTube channel Owen Likes Comics, where they focus on uncovering the history of and behind superhero comics. Drake, a long time content creator, explores avenues of comics that deeply fascinate him and explains it to the audience in the clearest possible way. Join us as we talk about Superhero discourse on YouTube, what academia could learn from the YouTube space, and books that drive our passion.
The concept of Mark Waid and Dan Mora on a Shazam book is a thought that fills me with absolute joy. This is the dream team for a character like Shazam, and yet some of the first reactions I saw were negative. Naturally, I jumped in as soon as my copy arrived, and I’m not sure why there is a negative response.
When a book opens with Shazam riding an extra-terrestrial T-Rex, because he had gotten lost from his spaceship and parent, you know you are in for a fun time. Dan Mora’s artwork really captures the fun and excitement of what a Shazam book could be. Waid approaches Shazam and Billy Batson with a realistic rationalisation. Shazam is not Superman, he’s a teenage kid with tremendous but specific powers. He’s fast and strong, but he’s not all powerful. Mora captures this perfectly, with a strong emphasis on fascial expressions and posing. The Rock of Eternity reflects this, by becoming his own form of the Bat-Cave, including trophies from his adventures, and elements that a child would consider necessary, such as a large tv, action figures and toys.
The book makes a fantastic illusion to the past, by referring to Shazam as Captain. Billy explains this as extending from a mocking nickname, but has caught on, as he can say this name aloud. Prior to DC acquiring the rights to Shazam and changing his name thanks to Marvel Comics, Shazam was referred to as Captain Marvel. The book’s title was change in the 80s, with the character’s name changing in 2011. Due to how Billy’s powers work, this is a smart choice, and one that acts as a friendly reminder of Billy’s family as well as the character’s history.
Waid addresses a comment that has been made frequently, namely, if Shazam is all powerful, why would Billy bother to turn back into a kid? Waid uses this as an excuse to differentiate the difference between Wisdom and Intelligence. That Solomon’s powers allow him to consider the right moral choice to make, using the example of ‘eating more vegetables’ as a piece of wisdom, instead of the powers telling him the complete nutritional breakdown of vegetables vs pizza. It makes sense then that Billy would still need to attend school and gain knowledge on his own. In addition to this, Billy talks about the physical differences of being Billy vs the Captain, that his human body feels slower and clumsier. That it is physically more difficult to move when compared to working as the Captain. The limitations of Shazam’s powers are also addressed towards the end of the issue. That while Shazam is super strong and fast, his sight and hearing are no different from that of a regular human, meaning that he can’t just know where people are at any time, and needs to manually seek out where he is needed.
Waid also includes a fantastic and updated nod to Billy Batson’s original career, being a boy reporter for Whiz Radio. Now, he runs a sponsored Fancast centred around the Captain and his adventures. In the modern age of podcasts, this is a natural evolution and one that fits Billy’s character as a naturally outgoing kid. Mora and Waid also include comments from the live chat on screen, a mixture of positive comments from ‘Got a selfie with him last month. So sweet’. To speculation ‘Would he win in a fight with Black Adam??’, and even a critical viewpoint such as ‘Smiling? Saving dogs? SOYBOY’. These are three typical statements we see in 2020s Superhero discourse, and are possibly comments that Waid and Mora have come across with their own work. With the obvious exception of getting a selfie with a superhero. This works much better for Billy Batson then it did for the New 52 Clark Kent, in which he was briefly re-imagined as a blogger.
During the issues final act, Billy is alerted to an 8.4 Earthquake in Southern California, which leads him to try to help. This is where the ultimate crux of this series hits, where Shazam’s, and by extension Billy’s, personality is momentarily reversed when being thanked by people and in front of news cameras. This is completely sold by Dan Mora’s art, as his mastery of fascial expressions and poses is on full display here.
This issue is a beautiful love letter to the history of the character, and a modern progression of the character. No moment of this issue is wasted, and the stunning work of Mark Waid, Dan Mora, Alejandro Sanchez, and Troy Peteri is on full display here.
Media has a profound effect on our lives. In some cases, it forms how we view the world, we may tie significant memories to media we consumed at the time, and in some cases, it can become motivation for our actions. I have a lot of familial ties to the film industry, but its comics that affect my life the most. It has become fuel for my doctoral research, it’s let me form close friendships with people both researching and working in the medium, but for the last 14 years, I got to share them with someone special to me.
I imagine people will laugh when I call my beloved cat Jones my grounding point. I’ve had her since I was 15, and up until a month ago, she’d barely ever left my side. My fuzzy toed, inbred mutant, entered my life as a tiny ball of fur, stepping out of a carry case brought over by my neighbour. She was possibly the smallest cat I’d ever seen, being only 3 months old, she was just old enough to leave her litter, in which she was the runt. It took a week for her to really get the run of the house, she was a little too short to comfortably climb stairs, but she figured it out pretty quick. In that week, we tried to find her name. Turns out, she would beat us to it. On a family viewing of Alien, Jones slowly curled up on my chest while I lay on the sofa. After the dinner scene, and the crew are looking for whatever burst out of Kane’s chest, Harry Dean Stanton’s character walks around looking for the cat. As he does, he calls out the cat’s name, Jones. As he’s calling for it, the small cat on my chest responded, meowing back at Stanton. This was the moment she gained the name Jones Laird.
She was never the cuddliest of cats, except when it came to me. She would frequently curl up as close to me as she could, or attempt to lay on my chest if I was slumped down in my chair. When she reached her full size, which still wasn’t that big, she learnt to jump up onto my bed, where she would frequently fall asleep next to me, with her head nestled into my hand.
She loved watching movies, and yes, she did genuinely watch movies. She had a specific love for horror, something we’ve never really been able to explain. The thing we enjoyed the most together though, was reading comics. If I was reading, she was there. If I’m sat in my chair, she’s on the arm, or curled up on the edge. If I’m sat up in bed, she’s there watching me flip the pages, and falling asleep watching. As daft as it sounds, I think she was genuinely disappointed when I’d close a book to go to bed. The look on her face was always one of annoyance when it was time to go to bed.
In 2018, she seemed to adopt a small Batman doll that I’d gotten while working at a convention. I had a Superman version already, and she’d sat with it a few times, but she was incredibly fond of that one Batman doll. If I came home from work or school and didn’t know where she was, I’d find her curled up on my bed, with her Batman doll. As such, we read a lot of Batman together, I have photographs of the two of us reading Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman run, but the Tom King run is the one I think of the most when it comes to our Batman read-throughs. In December of 2020, we binge read all 87 issues of Tom King’s Batman run (85 issues, plus 2 annuals), with Jones present for every single issue. Tom King became a favourite writer for us to binge, particularly Superman: Up in the Sky, Mister Miracle, The Vision, and Strange Adventures. In the past year, we started digging into The Sandman by Neil Gaiman (yes, she did want the series and was captivated by the Cat episode), and she started cuddling up to me more when I read Superman, especially the current Action Comics run by Phillip Kennedy Johnson.
When we turned the spare room into my office, it was imperative that Jones have her pride of place in the room. Specifically, she had her chair, which sat in the corner and watched over my desk, as well as her bean bag chair, which she very much loved, and became easier for her the older she got. Jones and I spent many days sat in that room, studying, reading, and in both of our cases, sleeping.
During the first few months of 2023, Jones started to become very sick. In late March, she was diagnosed with Intestinal cancer and Kidney disease. She became incredibly weak, and kept to one spot in the living room. I sat and read with her, hoping that it would be of comfort. On March 31st, I started reading Gotham City: Year One by Tom King and Philip Hester. On April 1st, she died with her head snuggled into my hand, and close to my side. On that morning, she refused to eat, and seemed to be in tremendous pain. The decision to take her to the vet was one of the hardest we’d ever made, but the last thing I wanted was for my little darling to be in pain any longer. It took several days before I could bring myself to finish Gotham City: Year One.
It has been a month since she passed now, her ashes sit in a small wooden box on my office shelf. She’s sat with our favourite Superman run (Tomasi & Gleason), and the Batman books she loved so well. It’s hard not to think of her and cry my eyes out. In October, I will be 30 years old. In the almost 15 years we had spent together, she’d been with me through my GCSEs, College, my undergraduate years, my Masters, and the beginning of my PhD. She sat with my while I wrote my first conference papers, and my (upcoming) first book chapter. It has been very hard to work without her. My fuzzy toed princess, the Cosmic Cat of Comics.
I don’t know if there is an afterlife, or anything there when we die, but if there is, I’ll see her again and tell her all the things she helped to build. I’ll catch her up on the Batman stories she’s missed, and most of all, we’ll fall asleep together with her head in my hands again. Until then, I like to think she’s following Neil Gaiman’s Death. Trying to help on her duties, and just waiting for me to join her. It might be a long wait, but my baby is safe.
This is an extract from my current research and is unfinished.
With print, the spoken word is given visual representation. As McLuhan discusses in his 1964 book Understanding Media (McLuhan.1964), the notion of visual representation of speech also comes with the properties of speech. However, due to print only being able to show what is said, timing and tone are missing and must be implied based on context. A reader understands how long it takes to say the words they are reading due to lived experience and their own understanding of context. Therefore, when a comic depicts a character speaking, the reader uses both the printed text and implications of the art to experience that panel temporally.
The application of text in comics comes in the form of ‘carriers’, a form of carrying information to the reader. As Cohn discusses in his book The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images (Cohn.2013), carriers function as a way for information to interface between images and text similarly (Cohn.2013:35). The purpose of a carrier, specifically speech balloons, is to convey to the reader that someone is speaking, to indicate who is speaking, and what is being said. This can be shown through the anatomy of a carrier. Despite changing their appearances depending on their purpose, their anatomy remains largely the same. The carrier being the form taken, for example a speech balloon, or thought bubble. The content being the words being spoken, with a tail giving a clear direction towards the text’s root. Finally, the root is the source of the dialogue being spoken, typically a character.
Diagram depicting the anatomy of a carrier. Example taken from Showcase ’94 #9 (Jurgens & Ordway.1994)
There are various forms of ‘carrier’ that creators can use to portray a different relationship between the content and the root. Each of these different forms of carrier take on distinct appearances depending on their purpose, giving a visual distinction to the relationship between root and content. Speech Balloons are the most common, denoting that a person is speaking. These consist of a solid oval with a tail attached. To indicate that the person is shouting rather than speaking at a calm tone, the oval becomes jagged, alternatively, if a person is speaking at a low level, such as when they are whispering, the line becomes a series of dashes. These small distinctions provide the reader with a clear visual indication of the tone and intent of the dialogue. Thought bubbles indicate a person’s internal thoughts and appear typically as a cloud with the tail now replaced with a series of smaller clouds leading from the root to the content. Finally, narrative captions do not have a root as they are intended for the reader rather than as part of the characters storyworld. As such, the caption does not contain a tail and can appear in a rectangular box. While there are exceptions to each of these, the basic structure remains and is informed by the anatomy described here.
Each of these different forms of carrier coincide with two different categories of classification. These are Root Aware (RA) and Adjacent Aware (AA) (Cohn.2013:35). A carrier can be any mixture of these two categories, including + RA, – RA, + AA, and – AA. If a carrier is + RA (Root Aware) then the source of the dialogue is fully aware of it. However, if the carrier is – RA (Root Unaware) then the source is not aware. An unaware root would include radios and televisions that project a noise but are not consciously making the sound. Conversely, if a carrier is + AA (Adjacent Aware) then other characters within the storyworld are able to hear the content being spoken. If a carrier is – AA (Adjacent Unaware) then the characters are not aware of it and it cannot be heard by them.
An example of a + RA / + AA carrier would be the speech balloon, a representation of clear speech, as an extension of this, whispering and shouting would also be + RA / + AA. Thought Bubbles would be considered + RA / – AA due to them acting as a character’s internal dialogue and purposely designed to only be heard by the root. A carrier that is – RA / + AA would be any coming from a root that is unaware or conscious of what it is saying, but audible to the characters surrounding it, such as a radio or television. Finally, a – RA / – AA carrier exclusively applies to an element that is purely for the readers benefit and does not affect the flow of time or characters within the story.
The following chapter looks at the four case studies and their tie in issues to see how these elements have changed between 1985 and 2009. For each case study, the core story issues will be analysed first, with a clear count of both carrier types and the RA/AA classifications shown. Observations from both a close reading of the issues and the data will be discussed before comparing the findings with the tie-in issues. The tie-in issues will provide a greater view of normality in superhero comics at the point of publication. This is due to the tie-in issues, while relating to the main story, being written, and illustrated by different teams than the primary issues. Once all four case studies have be analysed, the collective data will be compared to see how carriers have changed across three decades. These case studies will be looked at in chronological order, beginning with Crisis on Infinite Earths (Wolfman & Perez.1986), followed by Zero Hour: Crisis in Time (Jurgens & Ordway.1994), Infinite Crisis (Johns & Jimenez.2006) and finishing with Final Crisis (Morrison & Jones.2009).
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Across 12 issues, Crisis on Infinite Earths contains 5622 individual carriers. Of the four RA / AA classifications, + RA / + AA is the most prominent with 4,368 Root Aware and Adjacent Aware carriers. The second most common is – RA / – AA with 708 Root Unaware and Adjacent Unaware carriers. This shows a large discrepancy between the first and second most used types of RA / AA carriers, as there is a 3,660-carrier difference. Thirdly, + RA / – AA appears with 431 Root Aware and Adjacent Unaware carriers. Finally, the lowest number of carriers appearing in Crisis on Infinite Earths is – RA / + AA, with 115 Root Unaware and Adjacent Aware carriers. This gives us a difference of 4,253 carriers between the highest recuring RA / AA type, and the lowest recuring.
Graph comparing the RA / AA Types appearing in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Pie Chart indicating the percentage of each RA AA type in comparison to the total carrier count for Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The fact that + RA / +AA is the most prominent is not surprising as it includes speech, shouting and whispering. Out of the 4,368 + RA / + AA carriers, 4,175 are speech balloons, 184 indicate shouting, and 9 indicate whispering. Despite all three being Root Aware and Adjacent Aware, the volume and tone is suggested by the shape of the carrier. The high number of + RA / + AA carriers indicates a heavy amount of discussion throughout the story, each of which have a quantifiable element of time attached. As readers, we are able to extrapolate both what is being said, and how it is presented to give an approximation of how much time is passing in most carrier heavy panels of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The amount of – RA / – AA carriers present are all indicative of narrative captions, meaning there are 708 counts of narrative captions present. As narrative captions are neither Root Aware nor Adjacent Aware, they do not carry temporal weight in the comic. With 708 narrative captions, this implies a large number of carriers are not intended for the characters but are rather entirely for the benefit of the reader. While not carrying temporal weight, they do explain elements that are perhaps not clear through a close reading of the art alone.
Of the two lesser seen RA / AA carrier types, + RA / – AA appears more frequently. These appear as thoughts produced by the character but are inaudible to the surrounding characters in the storyworld. At 431, this implies a strong need for the audience to understand a character’s thought process. Despite the root being aware that they are thinking, it is more difficult to discern a measure of time due to the adjacent characters not being able to hear it, and thus time not progressing in a measurable way in the storyworld. This leaves + RA / – AA carriers, such as thought bubbles, with an ambiguous connection to time. Unlike Root Aware Adjacent Unaware carriers, – RA / + AA carriers do imply a progression of time, despite being the least used in Crisis on Infinite Earths. These Root Unaware and Adjacent Aware carriers appear as broadcast transmissions from either televisions or radios. The inclusion of these carriers in Crisis on infinite Earths lends itself to the magnitude of the story as they primarily appear as news broadcasts. These show a progression of time not only in the story but imply to the reader that the storyworld’s general audience is also invested in how the story is progressing and want continuing updates.
Graph indicating the carrier types and comparing them throughout Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The count for each of these carrier types was taken based on intent implied by context. While the majority of these carriers follow Cohn’s description for how specific carriers should look, such as speech balloons being round, thoughts appearing in bubbles, and narrative captions in boxes, there are several instances that feature a carrier serving one purpose but taking on the appearance of another. I shall refer to these as divergent carrier appearances, as they diverge from what is expected.
The first of these divergent carrier appearances is what I refer to as ‘Narrative Speech’. These are carriers that posess the properties of a speech balloon, but appear in the same boxes as narrative captions. These are denoted by quotation marks around the text, indicating that this is a quote or an act of contiuning speech. The information regarding the root is implied through context and requires reader involvement. Despite appearing similarly to a narrative caption, which does not hold narrative weight, it instead gives the reader an element of measurable time. This can be seen in the image below, which depicts Harbinger at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths. As the primary events of the story have drawn to a close, Harbinger[1] recounts the consiquences. Harbinger has become a narrator to events, with her words now replacing the narrative caption. Due to this, it is appropriate to refer to these as narrative speech, narration with the temporal properties of speech.
Example of Narrative Speech as seen in Crisis on Infinite Earths. In this case, Harbinger is narrating what happened to the Wonder Woman of Earth-2 at the story’s conclusion (Wolfman & Perez.1986:363).
The second case of divergent carrier appearances is with the carriers relating to the character Brainiac[2]. As previously noted, dialogue coming from machines, such as radios and televisions, appear as a – RA / + AA carrier, meaning that the machine is not aware of what it is saying. However, the character of Brainiac appears as a sentient machine, an extra-terrestrial android with extreme intelligence. Unlike the other speaking characters, who are organic life forms, Brainiac takes on an android body. This characterisation of Brainiac extends to the choice of carriers used to denote his speech. While containing the same anatomy as a typical speech balloon, the form it takes is square instead of circular or oval. This extends to the tail, as it contains strict straight lines creating a triangle, rather than curved lines. In addition to this more rigid look, a light purple boarder is added to distinguish it, which gives it both a more obvious visual distinction and allows for cases of Brainiac using narrative speech to be clear to the reader. The comparison between Brainiac’s carriers and the standard carriers can be seen in the image below with Brainiac and Lex Luthor[3] addressing a series of other DC Comics villains. Luthor’s speech balloon can be seen in the upper right, with a carrier of Brainiacs directly below. This gives a clear comparison between the more curved carriers of organic life forms and the harsh structure of Brainiac’s speech.
Brainiac and Luthor addressing the villains of the DC Comics Universe, this set of panels provides a clear comparison between Luthor’s and Brainiac’s carriers (Wolfman & Perez.1986:247).
Finally, the last divergent carrier of Crisis on Infinite Earths to discuss are carriers relating to the hero Firestorm[4]. Firestorm is a hero made up of two characters, in this case, the high school student Ronnie Raymond and Nobel Prize winning physicist Martin Stein. When forming Firestorm, one character makes up the physical body, while the other works as a driving conscious and voice of reason. Despite this clear split within the hero, both characters are fully conscious and frequently speak to each other while as Firestorm. This means that carriers between Firestorm’s two halves take on a different relationship with time. Thought bubbles created by Firestorm primarily come from Ronnie, but are audible to Stein. This creates somewhat of a paradox, a + RA / – AA carrier is audible to another character. In contrast, speech by Stein is audible to Ronnie, but not to others around them. In the case of Firestorm’s thoughts, we can consider these to still be + RA / – AA, as the two beings are sharing one body, making one root. With Stein’s speech, the root and adjacent elements now must be considered internally, as Firestorm’s brain is made up of two people. In this case, the root is Dr Stein, while the adjacent element is Ronnie. In both cases then, time must be passing as someone is conscious of words being ‘spoken’.
Example of Firestorm’s two components, Ronnie Raymond, and Dr Stein, having a conversation (Wolfman & Perez.1986:203)
With the carrier breakdown from Crisis on infinite Earths considered, comparing them to the tie-in issues will give a comparison between these twelve event comics, and the average issue coming out during this period. While all of the core issues and tie-ins were released between 1985 and 1986, the tie-in issues served a different purpose, and importantly, were written and drawn by different creators.
Bibliography:
Bates, C., Hamilton, E. & Swan, C. (1964) Superman #167: The Team of Luthor and Brainiac! DC Comics: Burbank.
Binder, O & Plastino, A. (1958) Action Comics #242: The Super-Duel in Space. DC Comics: Burbank.
Cohn, N. (2013) The Visual Language of Comics: Introduction to the Structure and Cognition of Sequential Images. Bloomsbury Academics: London.
Johns, G. & Jimenez, P. (2006) Infinite Crisis. DC Comics: Burbank.
Jurgens, D. & Ordway, J. (1994) Showcase ’94 #9. DC Comics: Burbank.
Jurgens, D. & Ordway, J. (1994) Zero Hour: Crisis in Time. DC Comics: Burbank.
McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill: New York.
Morrison, G. & Jones, J. G. (2009) Final Crisis. DC Comics: Burbank.
Siegel, J. & Shuster, J. (1940) Action Comics #23: Europe At War Part II. DC Comics: Burbank.
Wolfman, M. & Perez, G. (1983) New Teen Titans Annual Vol. 1 #2: The Murder Machine. DC Comics: Burbank.
Wolfman, M. & Perez, G. (1986) Crisis on Infinite Earths. DC Comics: Burbank.
[1] Harbinger – First appearing in1983s The New Teen Titans Annual #2 (Wolfman & Perez.1983), Harbinger was created specifically for Crisis on Infinite Earths and acts largely to explain the plot at the beginning of the story, and crucial to the story’s conclusion.
[2] Brainiac – Originally appearing in 1958s Action Comics #242 (Binder & Plastino.1958) as a green skinned alien. He was later explained to be a robotic entity created by the computer tyrants of the planet Colu (Bates, Hamilton & Swan.1964).
[3] Lex Luthor – created as a master villain for Superman, and first appearing in 1940s Action Comics #23 (Siegel & Shuster.1940), Luthor has been portrayed as both a mad scientist and a ruthless businessman.
[4] Firestorm – first appearing in Firestorm the Nuclear Man #1 (Conway & Milgram.1978) the hero was born through an accident involving nuclear fusion, he is created when Highschool student Ronnie Raymond, and Physicist Dr Martin Stein PhD combine to form one being.
Mikayla J. Laird 