The Deep Roots of Superhero Comic Book Universes

1: The Standard Superhero Comic Book Universe

We've seen this scenario done dozens of times before in comic book universes.  A world of metahumans.  There are the Heroes, working alone or in Hero Groups, who fight the Good Fight against the Villains, who want to either take over, destroy or radically-change the world in some fashion.  Sometimes, for variety, they fight a Monster, which only seeks destruction.  Watching this fight, mostly impotent to act, are the Ordinary People, who become important only if they aid or oppose a Hero or Villain.

In the fight, the Heroes almost never die; the Villains rarely do so.  Depending on how dark is the storyverse, Ordinary People may die at random:  in really dark universes, the Heroes and Villains may also die, but their deaths are rarely random and are always fairly dramatic.  Monsters may be destroyed, though similar Monsters are likely to appear another day.  Heroes have Sidekicks and Friends, Villains have Dragons and Minions.

Ordinary People can become Heroes (or Villians) either by a conscious attempt to become such, or by getting mixed up in Heroic or Villainous business.  The transition period is especially dangerous:  it usually involves first becoming a Friend or Minion, then (if one survives) a Sidekick or Dragon.  At each step there is the danger of an increasingly-dramatic death, and if one tries to skip the intermediate steps, this risk is heightened.

Both Heroes and (of course) Villains are essentially above the laws that govern Ordinary People.  Heroes are rarely even accused of the crimes they routinely commit for a higher purpose; Villains may be convicted and even imprisoned, but will soon escape -- usually within at most weeks to months of comic book time.  Almost never will a Villain be put to death for his crimes, no matter how horrible (cruel fates inflicted on others), massive (body count) or dangerous (potential death and damage).

One would think that the people would resent the superior status of Heroes, and turn on them, demanding at least that they obey the same laws as do Ordinary People.  But they don't, or if they do it's either a short-term reaction which is plainly done out of pure envy, or a longer-term spasm of utter irrationality.

Less reasonable is the insane tolerance shown toward super-villains.  One would think that the public would be outraged by villains who horribly torture innocents to death, or commit mass murders, or seriously attempt to destroy whole cities or planets. 

While it's true that modern America, and the modern West in general, are squeamish about executing people even with cause, America at least is generally willing to kill mass murderers, especially those who pose a major potential threat:  witness the fates of Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden.  And one would think that the degree of outrage would put major political pressure to execute someone as malign as the Joker, regardless of the obvious insanity defenses.  Yet this never happens.

The ubiquity of this scenario stems from something more than blind copying by one comic book creator of the last one's ideas, something more even than the desire of comic book companies not to kill off popular heroes or villains.  In particular, the extreme importance of the Heroes and Villains to comic book worlds, and the writers' refusal to subordinate them to their wider civilizations.  This can be seen even before modern superhero comics, in the Interwar Era pulp stories on which the heroes were originally based.

There's something very deep going on here.

2:  The Worse-Than-Useless Government

One obvious reason why the governments in comic book universes are unable to stop the Villains or control the Heroes is that both command powers far beyond the agents of the State or officers of the Law.  The government cannot fight the Villains alone:  they need the Heroes.  The Heroes need freedom from the pettifogging laws that bind Ordinary People.

Sometimes, the Government tries the obvious approach:  to recruit or create its own Heroes.

This never ends well.  If the Government tries to recruit its own Heroes, eventually these Heroes will leave Government service when the Government commands them to do something too obviously corrupt or evil.  If the Government tries to create its own Heroes, inevitably this will mean either a scientific accident which turns the nascent Heroes into Villains (or worse, Monsters).  If by a miracle the Government succeeds in creating Heroes, they will attempt to defect -- either dying in the process or becoming independent Heroes with utter distrust for the Government.

The interesting thing about this is that the Government is, after all, supposed to be an expression and representation of the combined will of the Ordinary People, the defenders of the Law and protectors of the Right.  One would imagine that the Government would show a higher morality to that of independent Heroes or groups of independent Heroes, who after all might be motivated by vainglory, ambition or greed -- or at least, that if the Government did behave corruptly, this corruption would be reined in by judicial or political forces.

But this is never the case.  Instead, the Government horribly abuses any Heroes it tries to recruit or create, often treating them as virtual slaves, despite the predictable consequences of losing the loyalty of its Heroes.  It will send them to perform evil and illegal missions, such as the assassination of dissidents, witnesses and innocents, even though it knows that this is against the Heroes' morality.  Interestingly, the Government is never held accountable for any of this, even by the Heroes, and it is rare that any of its leaders will face legal penalties or even Hero retaliation for their actions.  (However, sometimes evil Government leaders will suffer Karmic Deaths, especially if they've created Monsters).

Why is the Government viewed as at best neutral, at worst evil?  Why, for that matter, are the Heroes so utterly good?  (This latter sometimes gets lampshaded by the more cynical Heroes).

The answer lies in the earliest versions of the story.

3.  The Original Heroes

Civilization began a bit over 5000 years ago, just halfway into the Holocene (the period since the end of the last great glaciation).  Humans had developed agriculture a few thousand years earlier, formed villages and towns, and the towns grew into cities.  These cities controlled hinterlands which produced agricultural surpluses; the agricultural surpluses supporting specialized workers who could produce finely-crafted goods.  This meant a concentration of wealth and power, which had to be harnessed by leaders (the Sumerian word lugal meant literally "big man"; the Egyptian per-o meant "big house" and referred to the king's palace).

Civilizations fought wars.  Other city-states looked enviously upon the wealth of their neighbors, and uncivilized barbarians also lusted to plunder this wealth.  The city-states in turn wanted more and more hinterlands so that they could grow richer and stronger.  Thus there were wars, and city-states were welded into kingdoms and empires.

In pre-civilized times, all able-bodied men had fought, and fought in disorganized masses in which sheer numbers told.  The naturally-better fighters were a bit more likely to survive and triumph, but there was little to mark one man from another in terms of training or equipment.  All were equal in their poverty.

But now the elites of civilizations -- the aristocrats -- had better diets than the Ordinary People, so they grew taller and bigger and stronger and were healthier than most.  They could equip themselves with the products of the specialist workers -- metal weapons and armor.  And since they didn't have to work merely to subsist, they could devote time to training themselves to be truly skilled warriors.  They even had the resources to feed and equip and train groups of other skilled warriors -- the first soldiers -- to help them fight their battles.

Big strong healthy men with the best weapons and armor and training, leading organized soldiery, could plow through even larger masses of Ordinary People who lacked these attributes.  They were Heroes (a word which in ancient Greek meant "demigods" and really denoted nothing more than aristocratic descent coupled with fighting skills), ready to fight Villains (a word whose modern equivalent did not exist in High Antiquity and which comes from medieval French villein which only means  "peasant," thus originating as an insult the Hero would fling at whom he perceived to be an unworthy opponent) -- whomever in their own society was foolish enough to oppose them.  And they fought Monsters (dangerous wild beasts, brigands, barbarians, foreign foes).

They were the designated enforcers of what their societies considered to be Truth, Justice and the Way of their People.  They were above the Law because they were the Law (even before anyone wrote the Law down on stelae or tablets, and note Judge Dredd's famous boast).  What could some village council of peasants say to them other than words of submission or gratitude?

These were the original Heroes.  Though in reality they did not have metahuman abilities, they seemed to do so to the awed Ordinary People of their day.  In any case, when the bards (such as Homer) had flattered their reputations for enough generations, their in-reality awesome fighting skills would become metahuman abilities, in the memory of their peoples.  We know some of their names and personalities today:  Gilgamesh, Menes, Noah, Hercules, Achilles, Odysseus -- and many more names whom we know of only through litanies of descent, hero-lists and king-lists.

They were Aristocrats (though the term, in High Antiquity, implied far less sophistication than it would even by Classical let alone Modern times).  If an Ordinary Person served one, he might be accepted into his war-band as a Friend and become a Sidekick; possibly even ascend to become a Hero on his own:  though (of course) this was a dangerous path to tread.  If he had the temerity to oppose one, he faced death or at best defeat.

Of course, these Heroes were either Kings, or the Champions of Kings.  They were the Government, or at least the supporters of the Government.

Why are their modern analogs so antithetical to the Government?

The Republic For Which They Stand

We are in America, today, in the declining decades of our Republic.  (Yes, O Posterity, I knew this!).  Once, we really believed in the Republic, in the concept of a Government which would belong to and serve the People, rather than be merely the tool of a small selfish elite; one which would protect the liberties of an extraordinary Ordinary People, rather than function as a machine to grind those liberties into the dust.

In the time before our Republic, and particularly in the time before our Republic influenced the whole Free World to its emulation, the State belonged to Kings.  (Outside the Free World, it still does, even if the Kings call themselves Party Chairmen or Maximum-Presidents-for-Life or simply Leaders).  And Kings, of course, are always Heroes (at least in theory).

But no King, no matter how Heroic, can in reality rule alone.  In order to run his State he needs appointed officials, who collect taxes, collect intelligence, see to the execution of his orders, and otherwise run his Government.

Historically, these officials were non-Heroes.  Sometimes they were aristocrats who turned to careers not involving fighting; sometimes Ordinary People who did adminstrative jobs:  sometimes (as in Rome) they might be the slaves of the Heroic Emperor.  In any case, they were more or less despicable from the point of view of any true Heroes, and often there existed an uneasy tolerance between the Heroes (kings and generals) who led in battle and the Government who actually ran the State.

The Government, of course, wanted fully-loyal Heroes to serve them faithfully.  But such loyalty involved compromising the Aristocratic principles which made Heroes heroic.  Inevitably, thought the Heroes, any such servile Heroes would rebel against their servility, or be no true Heroes at all.

Now it must be understood that what the world before Freedom thought of as Heroic virtues were not necessarily what we would consider heroic, moral, or even particularly sane.