THRILLS WITH THROUGH-LINES

 This post is largely just a terminological update, exploring the subject of what makes it possible for the launch of a spinoff character to qualify as a "proto-crossover." In the 2022 essay STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS ON STATURE, I explained my view as to why the early appearances of certain comics-spinoffs, such as The Black Panther, qualified as proto-crossovers while others, such as Adam Warlock, did not.

The logic set forth in STATUTE remains intact, but I came across the word "through-line" that serves to describe the difference in the two types of spinoffs. The Merriam Webster definition is as follows:

a common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole

The relevant "element" is that of intentionality: whether or not one can show a probable intention of the creator(s) plan to use a character again in either a Prime or Sub role. In the case of the two heroes mentioned, there are numerous textual clues as to editor Stan Lee's plans to use the Panther again in a superordinate role, and those textual elements comprise a 'through-line" linking his early subordinate appearances to his slightly later superordinate status. In contrast, there are no such clues linking Warlock's subordinate appearances to his later starring status, so the former Sub appearances have no through-line and so do not have the status of proto-crossovers.

The same principle applies to the essay example of the Green Goblin. The Goblin is introduced as a new Sub in the cosmos of Spider-Man, while his partners, the Enforcers, are an ensemble-team who collectievly make up an "old" and established Sub. Thus, the initial story possesses a through-line to all of the Goblin's future appearances. However, he's an "old" villain by the time he encounters the "new Sub" Crime Master. But Crime Master will not make future appearances in the Spider-cosmos, so there is no through-line and his appearance alongside the Goblin may be called a villain-mashup but not a villain-crossover.   

In STATUTE I used Frasier Crane as an example of a character who was selected to be a spinoff character from CHEERS. Frasier made regular appearances in his Sub status on CHEERS, as opposed to the brief and scattershot appearances of Warlock in two separate Marvel features. Nevertheless, there's no suggestion of a through-line in episodes of CHEERS that Frasier was going to be launched in his own series.

The spinoff of the show ANGEL from that of the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER program is arguably a little more complex. The character of Angel is introduced as a mystery-man who comes into Buffy Summers' life in the first episode of her eponymous TV show, and he functions, like Buffy's other confidantes, as part of her bonded ensemble. (In an earlier essay, I argued that Buffy was a Prime and that her confidantes were Subs, but since reviewing all of the BUFFY episodes I've reversed myself on that statement.) So Angel became a Prime in that first episode, as much as characters like Willow, Xander and Giles, and there's no need to see him as any sort of crossover, proto or otherwise, when he branches off into his own program. However, after he gets his own show, any appearance he or one of his ensemble-mates made on BUFFY became a crossover, and vice versa with respect to BUFFY characters on ANGEL.  

The BUFFY Sub character Spike is even more involved. He's introduced as a pure Sub in the show's second season and continues in that status. The character's enormous popularity led to his becoming a regular member of the ensemble in the fourth season, though he was in the nature of a "opposed ensemble-character" after the nature of those described here. The transformation of Spike to said status is first set up in the 1999 episode "Wild at Heart." This episode, loosely inducting Spike into the ensemble, is the only one to qualify as a crossover due to a new "through-line" that affects all of Spike's future appearances. But only the first such episode that changes Spike's status gains a crossover-vibe, since only the first "phase shift" foregrounds Spike's acquisition of collective stature, as described in INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE. 

BUFFY THE WOKENESS SLAYER

 If there's anything I got from my massive rewatch of all seven seasons (1997-2003) of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, it's a recollection of the days when it was fun to be Liberal.

Not that I think I was ever a hard-and-fast Lib. When I saw Spike Lee's DO THE RIGHT THING on DVD, probably shortly after its 1989 debut, I knew it was not genuine drama, but political agitprop. I don't know when I read Laura Mulvey's essay on "the male gaze," but I recognized it as ultra-feminist garbage. Though the essay came from the 1970s and the movie from the very late 1980s, both represented politicized myths that had a great deal of influence on American entertainment in terms of the depiction of race and sexual nature. Both were harbingers of the Progressive credo known as "wokeness," even though the term predated both works but did not become a mainstream concept until the 2010s. The metaphor of wokeness depended on a simple binary opposition: to be woke was to be vigilantly aware of the many abuses that mainstream American culture inflicted upon the marginalized, while, implicitly at least, to be asleep would mean passively (and foolishly) accepting the status quo.  

Similar metaphors of vigilance surely appeared throughout American history and other national histories. But the concept of eternal vigilance (paging JFK) does not capture what the appeal of Liberalism was for a baby-boomer like myself. Classical Liberalism wasn't just figuring out how to keep Evil Conservatives at bay, it seemed to be about an embrace of plurality across the board. And Liberalism of the Sixties was much sexier as well-- which brings me back to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, which might be the last great fictional proponent of Classical Liberalism of the 1990s. 

  Now, if I was being paid to write this essay, I'd probably research all the complex and varied ways that the TV show renounced the sort of simplistic concepts of good and evil beloved by both Far Left and Far Right. But since I'm not, I'll confine myself to a BUFFY episode that's one of the lighter stories, even though it concerns the near-extermination of a marginalized race: the Chumash Indians of California.  

"Pangs" (no idea what the title signifies) premiered in 1999, the eighth episode of the fourth season, which means that a lot of soap opera has gone down the pike at that point. I'm not breaking down any of the characters or their multifarious relationships; that's what the Buffy wikis are for. Some quick points though. Xander has just started dating former demon Anya, but Willow's first major love-interest departed for parts unknown. Buffy's mother has gone to a relative's place for the impending Thanksgiving holiday, and though there's a potential new romance in the Slayer's life, she's still fairly bummed about former Great Love Angel, who decamped from the show at the end of Season 3 for his own series. Buffy talks her friends and her sometime teacher Giles to put together their own Thanksgiving, which of course makes for lots of comic chaos. Angel, by the way, shows up for the first BUFFY-ANGEL crossover, while Buffy's perennial enemy Spike manages to intrude on the holiday cheer as well.

 The main threat to the Clan Scooby is a vengeful Chumash Indian spirit, name of Hus, accidentally released from a subterranean tomb by Xander. But even before Hus starts killing people for the wrongs done to his people, Willow's first scene includes her reading the riot act to her White ancestors, remarking upon the hypocrisy of Thanksgiving, the status quo's coverup of a racial holocaust. The scene notes that Willow is "channeling" her academician mother, but the script doesn't make fun of the actual evil deeds done to the Chumash by past ancestors. Most of the humor flows from Buffy's frenetic attempts to celebrate a favorite holiday, political implications be damned. She does sympathize with Hus more than most of the foes she fights, and she joins Willow in using the preferred term of "Native Americans" over "Indians"-- even when Hus and some other vengeful spirits show up to crash the Thanksgiving party for an old-fashioned massacre.

Had anyone tried to remake this episode in the 2010s, all the comedy elements would have been gone, and Willow would probably have become a Black Women's Studies major, dissing the Evil White Patriarchy. And there would have been no room at all for Spike, whose primary purpose in "Pangs" is to provide a discordant voice. He snidely laughs at the Scoobies' desire to find a peaceful solution, and he's entirely justified-- as Willow herself eventually affirms-- that the situation is one of "kill or be killed." He also remarks that "the history of the world is not people making friends," and even the most empathetic Liberal can recognize some truth in this statement, even if it's coming from a bloodsucking monster who boasts about his own murderous history at the drop of a hat.      

By itself "Pangs" does not prove my claim that the BUFFY show could be the last major Liberal work of the 1990s, or an additional claim that it's far superior to most Liberal works of the next two decades. Most Liberal entertainments became increasingly infected with the disease of Woke, full of a smug confidence that there were only two clear sides, and that the Wokesters were on the right one. There have been some setbacks to Wokism in pop culture during the last five years, but I've seen no indications that anyone's managed to get back to the humor and pluralism seen in the original BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. This suggests that the rumored reboot from (of all corporate entities) Disney will probably be a shit-show of the first order. But whatever the sins of Joss Whedon might be, they'll never even come close to the driveling banalities of the Disney Corporation.          

Addendum: though Willow frequently disses the tropes of "cowboys vs. Indians" as communicated through cinema, the writers worked in a couple of Western tropes, not entirely with ironic meaning. In the opening scene, Buffy wears a girly cowboy-hat, a piece of headware she never sports again. (In fact I don't think the character ever wears any hat besides this one, preferring caps if anything.) In addition, late in the story Willow, Anya and Xander leave the Summers house on an errand, and when Angel brings news that the house is under attack by the Indian spirits, the three of them steal bicycles and rush to the rescue, accompanied by strains of music I found very "cavalry-esque."    

EQUAL AND UNEQUAL VECTORS OF AUTHORIAL WILL PT. 2

The visual metaphor of vectors mentioned in the previous essay has led me to invert one of the ideas stated in STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT.5. In that essay, I made a brief comparison between an earlier centricity-term, “stature,” and a newer one, “charisma.” I’ve now decided to reverse my formulations in that essay and to give stature more importance than charisma.

When I consider the base meanings of the words, stature signifies the result of physical growth, while charisma suggests a mysterious inner quality that appears from we-know-not-where. I first spoke of stature with respect to the Fryean mythoi, extrapolating the term from Aristotle’s assertion that the characters of tragedies were weightier than the characters of comedies. Thus my term “stature” connoted the different levels of conviction that readers could find in characters belonging to each of the mythoi. It now occurs to me that the idea of conviction also applies to centricity; the focal presences that occupy center stage are those around whom a given narrative revolves—which in turn means that they inspire maximum conviction in comparison to other presences within said narrative. I used “charisma” to denote this special status. Yet now it occurs to me that it makes more sense to speak of a superior vector of stature. For instance, in KNIGHTS OF COMBAT ANDCENTRICITY PT. 1, I examined Nancy Springer’s opinion that the titular hero of Ivanhoe was not the star simply because he was not as interesting as other characters in the novel. I rejected this idea. Yet I must admit that Ivanhoe does not have much of what one would call “charisma” in the ordinary sense of the word. However, what he does have is “stature.” He is the hero because his moral compass inspires maximum conviction in the reader. One may not believe that Ivanhoe resembles anyone in real life, but as the embodiment of the author's principal idea the knight is the glue that holds this particular novel together. The same principle would apply to those ensembles that I’ve judged to be distributive in nature, such as the Blackhawks and the Avengers.

However, charisma can be used to account for the fact that subsidiary characters in a narrative may hold more sheer appeal than those who enjoy the greatest stature. I would not disagree, for instance, that in IVANHOE the character of the Jewess Rowena proves more interesting than Ivanhoe. But now I would say that this fact merely indicates that Rowena has a charisma-vector superior to that of Ivanhoe, while he still has a stature-vector superior to hers. In terms of centricity, though, stature is always the sole indicator.

Charisma only affects centricity indirectly, and only in the evolution of serial narratives. For instance, in season 2 of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, the creators introduced Spike as a more confrontational enemy for the heroine. One could easily hold the opinion that Spike possessed greater charisma than Buffy, even though, being both a subordinate character and a villain, he could not possess greater stature. Hypothetically, the producers might have chosen, for whatever reason, to make Spike a co-equal partner to the Slayer, and then he might have attained a distributive stature. The showrunners did not go in such a direction, and so, for the length of his tenure on the BUFFY show, Spike always had a stature-vector unequal to that of the non-distributive heroine. Then the character migrated to the show ANGEL—which for some time had been of the distributive model, with Angel sharing stature with other members—and only here, whether they outshone others in charisma or not, Spike finally acquired stature equal to that of the other regular members.

This model also proves useful for describing a work in which a subordinate character seems to steal the center stage from the apparent star. For instance, I’ve written here that even though BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE is dominated by the story of the Joker’s origin, it’s still a “Batman story.” This is because the story does not diverge from the dominant model of the continuing Batman series, wherein Batman always possesses greater stature than any of his villains. However, there’s no question that in KILLING JOKE the Joker possesses a charisma-vector greater than that of Batman, whom, as I remarked in my review of the graphic novel, often seems in the nature of a tired old cop.

The same dynamic also applies to those serials that often or always focus upon “guest stars”who never again appear in the series. Early installments of Will Eisner’s SPIRIT are structured like almost every other adventure-hero feature, in which the Spirit helps good people and vanquishes bad people. However, even in the earliest years Eisner sometimes devoted stories to one-shot characters who seemed to take center stage, in that their triumphs or tragedies received the most attention. However, the Spirit was still the thread holding all of those one-shot characters together, and so he retained the greatest stature, even in stories like THE CURSE, in which the hero barely appears. As discussed in HOSTS, HEAVENLY AND OTHERWISE, the only exception to this centricity formulation appears in certain anthology titles. When a continuing character merely appears as an interlocutor—Jorkens in Arthur C. Clarke’s TALES OF THE WHITE HART, or the many “horror hosts” in comic-book titles—then whatever focal presence inspires the most conviction in each story possesses the greatest stature-vector, though not necessarily the greater charisma-vector.

STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT. 3

In SUBS AND COES PT. 1  I wrote:

Within serial narratives, the ongoing composition of the centric will may change over time.  However, each change takes place within either a new story or a new story-arc. In the first few exploits of Batman, he alone incarnates the centric will of the feature. After Robin enters, the Batman and Robin team becomes an ensemble of two, still incarnating much the same centric will. Twenty years later, Batman plays a lone hand again, and then, if Robin only occasionally appears, his status is that of an “eccentric” guest-star. However, when a new story presents a new Robin, the ensemble-of-two is reborn as if it never left.

To anyone concerned with the subject of narrative centricity-- in other words, just me-- it can prove vexing to seek a coherent definition of stature that can encompass all of the variations possible in serial narratives focused on ensembles.

The most familiar examples of ensemble-narratives are those focused on teams. However, the mere existence of a team does not prove that everyone on the team is part of an ensemble of coordinated, autonomous characters. In STATURE REQUIREMENTS PT. 2 I mentioned one example, that of the 1960s teleseries IRONSIDE, noting that Ironside was the focus of the series while his helpers were clearly subordinate types. Yet in another sixties series like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, it's evident to me that the team's leader is simply a "first among equals."

These differing dynamics seem to evolve without reference to the author's conscious intent. For my money, Joss Whedon's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003) follows the IRONSIDE model. Buffy Summers is the star of the show and remains so from start to finish, even though there's a lot of narrative time lavished on the support-characters-- Xander, Willow, Angel, and former adversary Spike-- and even though one of them, Willow, arguably becomes more powerful than Buffy.

Conversely, ANGEL (1999-2004), from the same producer, begins its first season by focusing principally upon its "noir vampire" character Angel, who receives aid from two assistants,  Doyle and Cordelia. However, for reasons I've never bothered to learn, Doyle's character was killed off and his sole talent, that of prognostication, was transferred to Cordelia. In the tenth episode of ANGEL, however, a subordinate character who'd appeared on the BUFFY show shifted the balance away from Angel as the superordinate focus. Wesley Wyndham-Price, though initially played for comedy, soon emerged as a coordinated character alongside Angel, and Cordelia followed suit. Other new characters joined the ANGEL cast and projected the sense of being autonomous allies to the vampiric hero, rather than his subordinates. There were some characters I would still deem to be of subordinate stature, like "Lorne the Empathy Demon" and the ditzy vampire Harmony. And naturally, whenever Buffy or any of that character's support-cast appeared on ANGEL, they had the status I mentioned above: that of "eccentric guest-stars."

Complicated though these parsings may seem, they've like a walk in the spring rain next to the convolutions on finds in comic books-- which I'll address in Part 4.

STATURE REQUIREMENTS

In the second paragraph of the Poetics Aristotle speaks of the differences in works of fiction which are caused by the different elevations of the characters in them. In some fictions, he says, the characters are better than we are, in others worse, in still others on the same level. This passage has not received much attention from modern critics, as the importance Aristotle assigns to goodness and badness seems to indicate a somewhat narrowly moralistic view of literature. Aristotle's words for good and bad, however, are spouddos and phaulos, which have a figurative sense of weighty and light. In literary fictions the plot consists of somebody doing something. The somebody, if an individual, is the hero, and the something he does or fails to do is what he can do, or could have done, on the level of the postulates made about him by the author and the consequent expectations of the audience. Fictions, there fore, may be classified, not morally, but by the hero's power of action, which may be greater than ours, less, or roughly the same. -- opening paragraph of Frye's "Theory of Modes" in ANATOMY OF CRITICISM.

 Definitions of "stature":
1 : natural height (as of a person) in an upright position
2 : quality or status gained by growth, development, or achievement--
Merriam-Webster online.

It now seems to me that although the significant value of "conviction" provides an ancillary function in terms of how readers apportion value to different characters in different mythoi, the central value is best covered by the word "stature."  I note that in Frye's paragraph he speaks of the "different elevations" of the characters, which may be fairly considered an assignment of their "stature," whether it's within the quasi-aristocratic schema of Aristotle or within Frye's Spenglerian conception.

Further, "stature." unlike "conviction," has a more direct connection with the concept of *dynamis.*  As the dictionary says, stature is a positive quality resulting from "growth, development, or achievement"-- an abstract quality based upon the physical nature of human growth-patterns. One may consider the aforesaid achievement as the result of exercising one's energies-- or *dynamis*-- to their fullest as per Nietzsche's dictum on the "will-to-power." 

Yet, within the vagaries of literature, great power doesn't always convey great stature (or contrary to Stan Lee, "great responsibility").  Or, to be more precise, the four mythoi each bestow a different type of *stature* upon their focal presences.  Given my pluralistic stance, it would be incorrect to assume that a comic hero has *less* stature than a serious hero.  The comic hero fulfills the stature appropriate to an unserious character, just as the serious hero does for his endeavors.

At the end of PARADIGM SHIFTING I chose four series-characters who were similar in that all four possessed a high level of *dynamis* within a *marvelous* metaphenomenality-- meaning that all can do fantastic things like breaking brick walls, casting magic spells, etc. I broke down their affinites with the Fryean mythoi as follows:

BUFFY SUMMERS-- Adventure
HARRY POTTER-- Drama
MARSHAL LAW-- Irony
RANMA SAOTOME-- Comedy


I should note that the scheme I propose does not depend on focal presences who possess marvelous powers.  It could be illustrated just as easily with protagonists who fell into either the "uncanny" or "naturalistic" phenomenalities that I've described in great detail elsewhere.  I did wish, however, to choose only characters with a high level of *dynamis* appropriate to a particular phenomenality, as well as characters who all tended to win their serial victories, since that uniformity helps me illustrate the different *stature* that accrues to each character, despite the similarities in terms of narrative values.

"I always win," Buffy Summers says as she squares off against a demonic Ubervamp in the seventh-season episode "Showtime."  To be sure, the super-vampire has beaten her on a previous occasion, but like most if not all adventure-heroes, Buffy's ultimate triumph is guaranteed by her mythos.  Adventure-heroes are meant to overcome the forces of evil, and in general the worst they can do is to die with their opponents, as the medieval Beowulf does while slaying a fearsome dragon at the same time.  To reference the terminology of myth-ritualist Theodor Gaster, the entire point of this mythos is to impart to the audience the "invigorating" thrill of victory, with little if any "agony of defeat."

In contrast, the heroes of the dramatic mythos don't necessarily always win, although it's significant that when Aristotle speaks of tragedy he includes an example of a "happy-ending tragedy," Euripides' IPHIGENIA AT TAURIS.  J.K. Rowlings' Harry Potter series  is a series which focuses far less on the thrill of victory than on what Frye calls the heroic "pathos" and what Gaster deems the "purgative" quality of ritual myth.  The presence of pathos implies the strong possibility that the hero may, like Orestes in the aforementioned Euripides play, become a sacrifice rather than a victor.  Throughout the Potter book-series, the central character wins most of his significant battles either singly or with the help of his retinue, but he's constantly stalked by the threat of the evil Voldemort and by prophecies that suggest, however ambivalently, that Voldemort will eventually kill him.  Harry Potter survives his trip to Calvary, but the series' emotional tone focuses upon the all-too-human pathos of its teenaged characters, and their need to control and/or purge their emotions in order to win out.

Now, I've noted in other essays that the heroes of ironic narratives usually don't win, but when they do, it's usually a victory in which the audience can place no conviction, as I noted in respect to Paul Verhoeven's ironic SF-film STARSHIP TROOPERS.  The Mills/O'Neill character Marshal Law conforms to this pattern, as shown by this Wikipedia entry:

 The title character, Marshal Law, is the government-sanctioned "super hero hunter" (aka law enforcement officer, or “cape killer”) with superpowers in the city of San Futuro, the near-future metropolis built from the ruins of San Francisco following a massive earthquake. Law's job is to take down other superheroes who have gone rogue, which he does with maximum force and great pleasure. Aided by the wheelchair-using “Danny” and his physically imposing (but extremely polite) partner “Kiloton”, the Marshal operates from a secret police precinct hidden below the city, dispensing just enough brutal justice to keep the city’s many super-powered gangs in a balanced détente while safeguarding the ordinary citizenry.

Although Marshal Law wins all of his battles against the superheroes-- who are seen as being stupid and venal even when they are not lawbreakers-- he generally exists in a world to which no redemption is possible.  Whereas it matters a great deal whether or not Buffy Summers triumphs over the monsters menacing her world, the Marshal's victories merely illustrate that he shares the venality of his enemies in no small part.  Thus the stature that accrues to Marshal Law is "mortificative" in Gaster's terms: the hero takes pleasure in scoring satiric points off the creators' targets, the superheroes, but the world he exists in has no positive aspects worth speaking of.

Adventure-heroes always win, or at least lose so rarely that most audiences take no account of the losses.  Ironic heroes rarely win, and when they do, the victories mean nothing.  Dramatic heroes occasionally win but they go through such pathos-inducing straits that they don't get much of a thrill out of it.  What's left for the comic heroes?

Comic heroes, whether they are as powerful as Ranma Saotome or as bumbling as Johnny Thunder, tend to win out, though they tend to do so less by superlative skill than by dumb luck.  Ranma usually displays superlative fighting-skills, and he does win most of his assorted battles with other comedic kung-fu opponents, but the emphasis is clearly upon finding ways to amuse the audience by undercutting the hero's triumph with silly pratfalls, comic embarassments and the like.  Thus his stature within his mythos exists to be a vehicle not for thrills but for the jubilative mood of the *incognitio,* the comic incongruity-- which, in Ranma's series, often takes the form of his transforming from a young guy to a big-breasted young girl.

I have not yet decided on a means of labelling the respective types of mythos-stature.  This will probably appear in a forthcoming essay, however.

MORE GENRE-FENCES

“Superhero... a heroic character with a selfless, pro-social mission... who is generically distinct, i.e., can be distinguished from characters of related genres (fantasy, science fiction, detective, etc.) by a preponderance of generic conventions..."-- definition of "superhero" from Peter Coogan's SUPERHERO: THE SECRET ORIGIN OF A GENRE (2006), p. 30.

Coogan's book may be the first formal attempt to define the superhero in terms of its narrative construction, as opposed to fans' informal definitions: that the hero needs or does not need a costume, needs to exist in contemporary times or not, and so on.  Plainly Coogan's definition rests entirely upon the divisions made possible by "generic conventions", as did Scipio's attempt, scrutinized here, to confine characters like Batman or Superman within genre-rubrics like "detective fiction" or "science fiction."

(Minor point: given the prior associations given the word "generic," I would prefer "genre-conventions," though as I noted here, I don't like the word "conventions" at the best of times.)

I have no problem with mapping out the functions of genres in terms of their general practice, but I'm leery of seeing them used as "fences" that artificially divide works A, B and C from works X, Y and Z even though all of them share the expressive and tonal qualities one can find in the Fryean *mythoi.*  It's interesting that Coogan cites Northrop Frye in SUPERHERO, though only on one page, referencing Frye's "theory of modes."  Otherwise Coogan's approach seems closer to that of the structuralists, whom Frye did not endorse, as I recall, because they insisted only upon breaking genres down into their component parts and paid little attention to the "total vision" of a work.

Take, as an illustrative example of Coogan's book, his take on Joss Whedon's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (p. 48), whom Coogan considers "a leading candidate" for "exclusion by genre distinction."  Coogan's reasons are summed up in this essay by Peter Sanderson, which disagrees with Coogan's specific conclusions but not with his concentration on "genre-conventions."  Sanderson does a good job summarizing the ways in which Coogan finds Buffy lacking as a "superhero," as well as registering his own objections to Coogan's substitute term "super hero."  However, the greatest problem I have with Coogan's Buffy-exclusion occurs here:

"...the Slayer is a hero-type that predates the superhero, fitting firmly within the larger horror-genre ... [Buffy's] hero-type descends from actual vampire hunters, including the dhampir... Thus, though the writers of BUFFY draw on superhero conventions, the stories are generically distinct from the superhero genre."

Coogan's literalist interpretation of genre is precisely in the mode of Scipio.  If Buffy's "hero-type" predates the superhero, then she cannot be a superhero, just as Superman cannot be an "actual superhero" because he inherits his dominant tropes from science fiction.

Sanderson also draws attention to many examples in which BUFFY's television scripts do suggest her identity as a "superhero," but his solution to the categorizational dilemna is not much better than Coogan's, as Sanderson terms Buffy a "displaced superhero" simply because she borrows conventions from other genres.

One reason that I choose to emphasize Frye's remarks on his four mythoi  is precisely because I believe it makes it possible to talk about the constitutive nature of popular fiction without getting quite so hamstrung as to what trope belongs to what genre.  For instance, Coogan would have his readers believe that there is a "horror genre" that is so constituted that it is fiercely indepedent of any other genre, be it that of the superhero or (presumably) any other.

And yet, what happens whenever the equally capacious genre of science fiction chooses to do its take on the horror-genre's vampire myths?  Be it Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND, Curtis Harrington's 1966 QUEEN OF BLOOD, or the "Space Vampire" episode of the teleseries BUCK ROGERS, do these remain within the horror-genre, because they're about vampires?  If so, does that mean that of BUCK ROGERS' 32 episodes, only one is horror, leaving the other 31 to be "actual" science fiction?

This seems to me a messy and arbitrary approach to categorization.  I imagine that others may find my application of the Fryean mythos to pop fiction no more winsome.  But at least an emphasis upon the emotional and expressive core of any given work can avoid some of this tendency to "fence in" tropes that were "born free."

SYNCHRONICITY SIDEBAR

Before moving on to more theoretical matters re: synchronicity, I thought it might be appropriate to relate a couple of instances of my own quizzicial encounters with same.

One of them I mentioned on a 6-2-2003 post on the Forum that Deserves Not Mention:

...there aren't any appreciators of Jungian synchronicity here to my knowledge, but the way I found the above link is synchronicitous. Looking for a definition of "New Age," I typed in "definition of New Age," and the above link was about the second or third one I explored. As it happened, it's by Massimo Introvigne, whom I didn't know from Adam-12 before last week or so, when I read his article at the online SLAYAGE site. Since said article had a comics-connection, I posted a link to it here under "Vampires, superheroes and the Frankfurt School." And now a week later, I'm linking to something else Introvigne wrote on a wholly-different subject.

I just hope the Synchronicity Switchboard is just throwing this development my way to help convince you poor rationalist doubters, and not trying to tell me to quit my job and become a publicist for Massimo Introvigne. I have enough trouble trying to hype my own stuff.

Like most of my synchronous experiences, this was something less than a vision on the Road to Damascus (i.e., I probably never read anything else by Introvigne).  But I thought then, and still think, that it's a little odd to stumble across two disparate works by the same (not especially famous) author within the course of a week or so.  Others' mileage will vary on whether this example deserves to be filed under "more than coincidence."

Incidentally, eight years later the link to Introvigne's short historical writeup on the early hisory of the Frankfurt School is still good, and the essay's still recommended:

http://slayageonline.com/essays/slayage7/Introvigne.htm

An even less vision-worthy incident occured over the Xmas holidays.  My 13-year-old nephew has become a fan of certain kinds of "so bad it's good" cinema, as well as being a big STAR WARS fan.  Thus I took it upon myself to introduce him to the questionable joys of the 1980 FLASH GORDON, which I'd planned to watch anyway in order to review it here. 

The movie was a big success with my nephew, though others in the household weren't nearly as enthusiastic.  However, later that day my brother chose to bring up a favorite episode of SEINFELD on Netflix Streaming: "The Bubble Boy," which first aired on 10-7-92.  The plot revolves around Jerry and his posse getting roped into visiting a "bubble boy," with the black-comic outcome that George gets into an argument with the kid and nearly causes his death.  In a B-story, Jerry and Elaine get lost on the way and end up in a diner, where a waitress importunes Jerry to put his celebrity photo on the wall.  And there on the diner-wall with various other celebrities (whom I did not note down) is none other than...

...Sam J. Jones, sporting his classically-bad FLASH GORDON haircut.

"What is Sam Jones to me, or me to Sam Jones?"  Probably the real question should be who in the SEINFELD crew thought of sticking a photo of the not-terribly-successful actor on the diner-wall.  Could it have been Seinfeld himself, known for peppering the show's sets with Superman trinkets?  Or maybe it was just the luck of the draw; someone selecting stock photos at random, but only of actors who had no great reputation, to show that Jerry wasn't going to be joining any immortals on the wall.

I'm not sure if two Sam Joneses in one day trumps two Massimo Introvignes in the space of seven days.  I wouldn't say that I was "guided" to those particular experiences in the rather egotistical "the universe revolves around me" manner of certain types of Christians.  But I do think that whenever you encounter some particularly improbable set of apparent coincidences, it's worthwhile to do a little thinking about the nature of what we label "coincidence."

BUFFY THE MYTHOS SLAYER

“The four mythoi that we are dealing with, comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony, may now be seen as four aspects of a central unifying myth. Agon or conflict is the basis or archetypal theme of romance, the radical of romance being a sequence of marvelous adventures. Pathos or catastrophe, whether in triumph or in defeat, is the archetypal theme of tragedy. Sparagmos, or the sense that heroism and effective action are absent, disorganized or doomed to defeat… is the archetypal theme of irony and satire. Anagnorisis, or recognition of a newborn society rising in triumph around a still somewhat mysterious hero and his bride, is the archetypal theme of comedy.”—Northrop Frye, ANATOMY OF CRITICISM, p. 192.

When I referenced these four mythoi in essays like NOTES TOWARD AN IDIOM OF THE SUPERHERO, I wrote:

“By contrast, a work that purports to put aside the element of adventure for other elements is by Frye’s definition deviating from the mode of romance.”

For “other elements” I probably should have said “the elements of other myth-themes.” A given work may share elements of all four myth-themes in varying proportions—may include elements suggestive of conflict, of catastrophe, of abjection, and of rebirth—and yet still have be more strongly oriented toward one theme rather than to any of the other three. I would revise Frye’s terminology here with regard to one of his themes, however. Though he says that pathos can be present in a work whether or not the protagonist is a victim or a victor, the word “tragedy” inescapably suggests that he must be a victim. Therefore for tragedy I will substitute “drama.” Colloquially Americans understand “drama” as applying to works that are more “serious” than either romance or comedy, though such “drama” is still a good deal more accessible to most audiences than is the continuum Frye calls irony/satire.

(I should add that Frye’s definition of comedy proper is strongly predicated on the model of Greek New Comedy, which dominantly centered about the idea of young lovers successfully being joined despite some opposing force. It may be possible to see the theme of anagnoris, or “discovery,” even in comedies that are not about overt romantic themes, but that would be a project for another time.)

For an example of a work that shares elements that might support all four themes, I’ll cite BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. For instance, in contrast to many “normative” superhero works, the BUFFY teleseries could easily viewed as a drama with action-elements, given the show’s focus on the agonies and ecstasies of teens confronting both the horrors of adult life as well as real monsters. Yet to solve the question of which narrative elements predominate—those of action or of drama—one might compare BUFFY to the book-series HARRY POTTER. Though different in medium, POTTER also pursues the subject material of young people balancing the demands of school and of supernatural menaces. But elements of pathos in POTTER are often, unlike most conflicts in BUFFY, resolved without a single punch in anyone’s face. If it is demonstrable that BUFFY’s problems are usually solved or even tempered by violent action, then BUFFY is dominated by the agon of the romance.

One could also make a case for BUFFY as an irony. Often the show’s the characters are reduced, physically and emotionally, to an extent that parallels similar developments in the Moore-Gibbons WATCHMEN, which I’ve already cited here as an ironic take on the superhero romance. Additionally, BUFFY’s universe is, like that of WATCHMEN, a world without transcendence, where the Powers of Evil basically control the universe and can only be beat back a little at a time. But despite these moments of sparagmos (i.e, “tearing apart”), the characters of BUFFY are never quite as thoroughly humiliated by events as are the Watchmen. Despite the fact that WATCHMEN’s Doctor Manhattan possesses more raw power than any of the BUFFY heroes, the former is powerless to take meaningful action, at least on the planet of his birth. The “power of action” for the BUFFY protagonists is far more expansive.

The narrative structure of BUFFY also succeeds in part as a New Comedy, beyond the surface elements of the witty repartee for which the series is well known. Admittedly, when the teleseries concludes Buffy Summers is not married or even “with anyone.” But it could be argued that even without a marriage she has not only preserved the nucleus of her own “Scooby family” despite all opposition, and ends up “propagating” a new family by activating all the women who have dormant “Slayer potential.” This would parallel the theme of anagnorisis insofar as her “discovery” of a new way to combat evil births a new society. Yet the “Slayer society” is a warrior clan, which by its nature cannot suggest the sort of stable social order in which real children can be nurtured. A better example of the superhero put forth as pure comedy might be Rumiko Takahashi’s RANMA ½. Though the adventures of Ranma Saotome vary between high adventure and low sitcom goofiness, the constant focus of the series is the how Ranma and his reluctant betrothal Akane “discover” the depths of their feelings for one another and become reconciled to them. These characters are no more married at the conclusion of the series than Buffy is, but the final story does at least feature an attempt to get them married, even if it descends into comic chaos. More, it’s implicit that these two teenagers are destined, by their creator’s fiat, to have the New Comic “happy ending” at some undisclosed point in their futures.

(Yes, I know some people wouldn’t deem Ranma Saotome comparable with costumed superheroes, even though Ranma can punch through stone walls and triumph over any number of super-powered adversaries. But despite the sitcom-feel of many RANMA-stories, Ranma may be closer in spirit to Buffy—or Batman, for that matter-- than either Harry Potter or any of the Watchmen, since comedies and romance-adventures both tend toward the upbeat rather than the downbeat.)

It seems clear to me that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER’s narrative emphasizes most prominently the elements of the romance-adventure. Comic repartee and familial bonding help Buffy triumph over both the agonies of personal pathos and the perhaps-darker aspects of an ironic universe, but neither repartee nor bonding overshadow the elements of the agon, of the combative hero’s ability to kick evil in the teeth. Buffy’s triumph doesn’t eradicate evil, but she deals the Powers of Evil a substantial setback. And whereas constant vigilance against future threats would not be the sort of “triumph” most comedies could sustain, for a romance/adventure it’s satisfying, for the hero is identified with his (or her) endless struggles than his (or her) social role.

And thus, despite possessing elements germane to the other three mythoi, BUFFY belongs most to the romance-adventure category. From this we can deduce that an ambitious superhero work does not necessarily need to renounce the elements proper to the romance-adventure mythos simply to appear more “sophisticated,” despite elitist critical cant to that effect.