NULL-MYTHS: SQUADRON SUPREME (1985)

Since I'm a little behind this week-- and since I never claimed I would necessarily present a new "null-myth" every week-- I've decided to recycle some material I wrote in an earlier post. It occurred to me that Gruenwald's meditations on erring superheroes make for a good example of "overthinking the overthought," as well as offering a contrast to the JUSTICE LEAGUE story examined earlier, which seems to be simple kid-fare but proves more symbolically complex than many tedious attempts at superhero-satire. Ironically, Alan Moore's WATCHMEN, a meditation on the same theme of "realistic superheroes," came out the next year after SQUADRON, but though Moore had a philosophy of sorts to express, he didn't go overboard in his philosophical asides. Gruenwald may be less like the artist seeking to express a particular outlook than the editor seeking to express forbidden thoughts-- the forbidden thought here being, the viability of superheroes as dictators.

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In my post on ethical criticism, I criticized three of the heroes as being inadequate vessels of moral agency, and I still believe that Gruenwald did not manage to use his high mimetic superheroes as well on the ethical plane as did, say, Frank Miller in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Still, there are some promising elements that suggest certain mythopoeic intuitions that might have been better-developed. Of the three character-related plotlines I castigated for being facile moral agents, the one involving the Golden Archer-- who brainwashes his superhero girlfriend into loving him-- doesn't succeed any better in the mythopoeic department than in the ethical one.

The plotline with Hyperion (pastiche of DC's Superman) comes a little closer to a successful symbolic discourse. True, there's nothing exactly new about a goodguy hero fighting a malefic counterpart who embodies many of his self-oriented desires, which is what happens when the goodguy-Hyperion is displaced by such a counterpart, who promptly forms a romantic liason with Power Princess (pastiche of DC's Wonder Woman). But at the conclusion of the inevitable "duel of duplicates," Gruenwald shows an interesting ambivalence toward how the "good" hero destroys his duplicate. On one hand Gruenwald exonates "good Hyperion" from the charge of willful murder by rationalizing that "bad Hyperion" is just made of "psuedo-matter," and thus is apparently not any more alive than the Superman villain Bizarro. On the other, Gruenwald borrows a little from the Greek myth of Orion as far as punishing an overreaching hero, so that "good Hyperion" is struck blind (albeit temporarily) as a result of the duel. Thus as in many archaic myths the hero is allowed the pleasure of destroying a foe and subsequently chastised for going beyond the normal limits of social existence to do so.

Lastly, though I caviled at one of the specific plotlines involving the character of Tom Thumb-- who, as I noted, is a little too goody-good in being conflicted about stealing a vital serum from a despotic overlord-- this dwarfish hero is probably the most interesting figure in SQUADRON in a mythopoeic sense. Once or twice Gruenwald makes references to Thumb seeking to make a "deal with the devil," but this Faustian metaphor goes nowhere and isn't even exclusive to the character (Nighthawk uses the same phrase). Thumb is no Faust, but a Hephaestus amid the traditionally-gorgeous superhero "gods." Tom Thumb is the nearest structural parallel to the character of Rorshach in WATCHMEN, in that both are outsider-heroes whose existence adds a dark counterpoint to the fantasies of beauty and power embodied by superheroes, just as maimed Hephaestus did for the Greek gods.

Of course, as should be obvious, I still think WATCHMEN succeeds in terms of its use of symbolism than does SQUADRON, but the archetypal view demonstrates that the Gruenwald work is not entirely worthless because it does not attain to the same level of significant literary merit. If nothing else, SQUADRON is certainly significant in historical terms as one of the first works to begin expanding the normative superhero work into divergent literary modes, and making those modes more a part of the "mainstream."

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On a side-note, I can't resist adding that Gruenwald had no problem in believing that his cosmos' version of Wonder Woman, the aforesaid Power Princess, would have no problem with fascism-- which puts the writer in the same company with my old sparring-partner Charles Reece.

MERIT RAISED IV

For this final essay I'll start by recapping the salient points from the three previous essays:

(1) I began by stating that although WATCHMEN and SQUADRON SUPREME, two thematically-related works, both made John Jakala's bloglist of literary-merit comics, I considered that only the former possessed significant literary merit. However, my reasons for that determination did not spring from either of the two most widely-known lit-crit approaches, that of the ethical and the aesthetic, even though I concurred that if I *had* used either approach SQUADRON would have failed the merit-tests either way. I believe that the Gruenwald work also basically fails the test for significant merit via my favored approach, that of archetypal criticism, but critiquing SQUADRON through an archetypal lens may demonstrate aspects of latent symbolic discourse often overlooked by the other two approaches.

(2) I further stated that while I felt that the focus of ethical criticism was upon moral *content,* and that of aesthetic criticism was upon *style,* the focus of archetypal criticism was upon *literary form,* upon the type of story the author was trying to communicate, which attempt largely predestines the symbolic discourse of a given work. Thus it's important to distinguish how works belonging to the same genre can fall into different modes. WATCHMEN and SQUADRON both to a large genre called "superheroes" as well as a smaller subgenre: "pastiche-superheroes used to comment on the 'normative' manifestations of the genre." However, based on how the authors structure their respective characters' "power of action," each falls into a different mode, and whether each work passes or fails the archetypal merit-test depends on the dominant parameters of that mode. Thus WATCHMEN succeeds as an ironic take on the superhero genre and SQUADRON fails as a "high mimetic," quasi-tragical superhero work.

(3) Both of these modes as well as Frye's "low mimetic" mode (which might include something like Bendis' POWERS) exist in a descending scale from the mode of romance. In this mode, protagonists have a "power of action" which, though not capable of creating aspects of reality as are the powers of the gods of myth, is still ineluctably positive. In romance (which connotes what most people call "adventure"). the hero's actions generally result in desireable outcomes, occasionally marked by tragic, comic or ironic touches but not fundamentally attuned to the demands of those mode-forms. As the "power of action" becomes increasingly attenuated going down the scale, the mode becomes more responsive to the perceived demands of "reality," even in works that have the phenomenal content of fantasies. Thus the "power of action" generally becomes more and more negative in tone going from romance to high mimetic to low mimetic to irony.

Now, on new stuff:

I mentioned before that WATCHMEN and SQUADRON shared themes in common in that both are about the abuse of societal power by superheroes. I didn't mention that they're opposed in terms of how that abuse manifests, with SQUADRON focusing on superheroes abusing power by becoming rulers, while WATCHMEN concerns superheroes abusing power by obeying corrupt rulers (though the plot-point that begins the story, the murder of the Comedian, has nothing to do with any action by any governmental body). Moore's ironic view of superheroes is extrapolated from the image of the normative superhero in its romance-mode, where the hero is shown dominantly serving the status quo. This is one fear people would logically have of superheroes "if they were real," that they would be used as tools of oppression by the rulers, while SQUADRON embodies the opposite fear: that the superheroes might become rulers.

In the normative superhero work, it's a given of the romance-mode that the hero is neither a lackey nor a tyrant; he simply *is,* and barely needs more than a ghost of a motivation to become a costumed do-gooder. WATCHMEN, being further down the "power of action" scale than SQUADRON, renders its protagonists with great detail as to their psychological foibles and existential crises, until the mythological universe of Moore and Gibbons seems like one of those visions from Gnostic theology: a world of pure suffering and alienation. As characters the Squadron-heroes are much more simply designed. In terms of verisimilitude they're not much more complex than the simpler normative superheroes, and most of Gruenwald's attempts to give each of them psychological complexity merely seem to be layered atop figures that remain resolutely flat. But although Moore delves deeper into his heroes' dark hearts, he isn't able to capture one aspect of psychology that Gruenwald does: a credible motivation for any individual, no matter how messed-up, to become a costumed vigilante. At best Moore suggests that his Watchmen become "masks" as a means of self-actualization: Rorschach in particular dons a mask that suggests the chaos he perceives in all of lived existence (and not just his own). But given his ironic cosmos it's perhaps not surprising that there's little reference in WATCHMEN to one of the cardinal superheroic motivations: the desire to help others, to ease the suffering of the afflicted.

In contrast, though Gruenwald's heroes are not drawn with any great verisimilitude, they always maintain some capacity for empathy, which makes their devotion to their twin "callings"-- both as superheroes and as benevolent tyrants-- more logical. This is an example of the sort of "latent symbolic discourse" I referenced in the first paragraph, where one observes that Gruenwald had some definite intuitions about his revision of the normative superhero mythos, but that he didn't quite carry them through.

In my post on ethical criticism, I criticized three of the heroes as being inadequate vessels of moral agency, and I still believe that Gruenwald did not manage to use his high mimetic superheroes as well on the ethical plane as did, say, Frank Miller in THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS. Still, there are some promising elements that suggest certain mythopoeic intuitions that might have been better-developed. Of the three character-related plotlines I castigated for being facile moral agents, the one involving the Golden Archer-- who brainwashes his superhero girlfriend into loving him-- doesn't succeed any better in the mythopoeic department than in the ethical one.

The plotline with Hyperion (pastiche of DC's Superman) comes a little closer to a successful symbolic discourse. True, there's nothing exactly new about a goodguy hero fighting a malefic counterpart who embodies many of his self-oriented desires, which is what happens when the goodguy-Hyperion is displaced by such a counterpart, who promptly forms a romantic liason with Power Princess (pastiche of DC's Wonder Woman). But at the conclusion of the inevitable "duel of duplicates," Gruenwald shows an interesting ambivalence toward how the "good" hero destroys his duplicate. On one hand Gruenwald exonates "good Hyperion" from the charge of willful murder by rationalizing that "bad Hyperion" is just made of "psuedo-matter," and thus is apparently not any more alive than the Superman villain Bizarro. On the other, Gruenwald borrows a little from the Greek myth of Orion as far as punishing an overreaching hero, so that "good Hyperion" is struck blind (albeit temporarily) as a result of the duel. Thus as in many archaic myths the hero is allowed the pleasure of destroying a foe and subsequently chastised for going beyond the normal limits of social existence to do so.

Lastly, though I caviled at one of the specific plotlines involving the character of Tom Thumb-- who, as I noted, is a little too goody-good in being conflicted about stealing a vital serum from a despotic overlord-- this dwarfish hero is probably the most interesting figure in SQUADRON in a mythopoeic sense. Once or twice Gruenwald makes references to Thumb seeking to make a "deal with the devil," but this Faustian metaphor goes nowhere and isn't even exclusive to the character (Nighthawk uses the same phrase). Thumb is no Faust, but a Hephaestus amid the traditionally-gorgeous superhero "gods." Tom Thumb is the nearest structural parallel to the character of Rorshach in WATCHMEN, in that both are outsider-heroes whose existence adds a dark counterpoint to the fantasies of beauty and power embodied by superheroes, just as maimed Hephaestus did for the Greek gods.

Of course, as should be obvious, I still think WATCHMEN succeeds in terms of its use of symbolism than does SQUADRON, but the archetypal view demonstrates that the Gruenwald work is not entirely worthless because it does not attain to the same level of significant literary merit. If nothing else, SQUADRON is certainly significant in historical terms as one of the first works to begin expanding the normative superhero work into divergent literary modes, and making those modes more a part of the "mainstream."

FINAL NOTE: Since I noted "negative manifestations" of the other types of criticism, I may as well say that the archetypal approach has one too, which I may as well call "formalism," the belief that merit is automatically accrued to a work simply by fulfilling the accepted demands of the form. I think I've avoided doing that here, though.

MERIT RAISED PART III

Aesthetic criticism may be loosely described as a reaction to ethical criticism's emphasis on literature's moral nature. The slogan "art for art's sake" has come to describe the emphases of aesthetic criticism, even where the critics would claim that their favored works have some ethical value despite lacking any clear moral as such. This criterion is not as commonly purveyed through secondary-school lit-classes as the ethical type, but most non-critics are aware what's implied by the aesthetic position, if only through spoofs of wild-eyed beatniks creating incomprehensible non-representational art. In essence aestheticism implies the distanced contemplation of the finely-wrought work of art, and within the sphere of comics-criticism this type of criticism has traditionally focused more on the visuals of a comics-work rather than the written text, though this has been changing in the last decade or so.

Whereas in my last essay I asserted that ethical criticism probably accounted for both WATCHMEN or SQUADRON making John Jakala's informal "literary merit" list, I wouldn't claim that aesthetic criticism had much influence on SQUADRON's appearance there. While both the text and visuals of WATCHMEN are clearly crafted to be contemplated aesthetically-- Gibbons' grid-like pattern serving to continually emphasize the formal blending of the two narrative elements-- not even SQUADRON's most fervent adherents could argue that there's anything aesthetically remarkable about the Gruenwald work. (For what it's worth, Mark Gruenwald and one of his SQUADRON collaborators Paul Ryan produced a much more aesthetically-pleasing blend of art and text in the Marvel "New Universe" series D.P.7, an example of a "good melodrama" in my book.)

Aesthetic criticism does, if nothing else, help correct ethical criticism's utilitarian need for an edifying or challenging moral dilemna, which fails to account for the literary standing of a figure like Edgar Allen Poe, himself a critic who advocated a position much like "art for art's sake." On a personal note, I can see the appeal of aesthetic criticism, as years ago I briefly debated Dave Sim on the matter, with me taking Oscar Wilde's position that "aesthetics are more important than ethics" while Dave took the opposing position. But as should be clear from my D.P. 7 example, my notion of aesthetics takes in the excellence of popular art according to whatever mode and/or genre the work belongs to. Just as ethical criticism devolves into mere ideological criticism, so too does aesthetic criticism devolve into the superficial avant-gardism of a Clement Greenberg, who believed that the avant-garde poet's originality was comparable to that of some creative deity:

"The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms, in the way nature itself is valid, in the way a landscape -- not its picture -- is aesthetically valid; something given, increate, independent of meanings, similars or originals. Content is to be dissolved so completely into form that the work of art or literature cannot be reduced in whole or in part to anything not itself."-- Greenberg, "Avant Garde and Kitsch," 1939.

I understand the appeal of this extreme aestheticism but I don't endorse it: it leads to severe misperceptions like Greenberg's demonstrably-false notion of popular art as some sort of "rear guard" action against the supposed profundities of the avant-garde. Content and form are of course never truly dissolved; what Greenberg has been caught up in is the avant-garde artist's attention to *style,* just as the ethical critic is obsessed with a particular form of *content,* that of moral concerns. In my next essay (which will probably work in a little more about WATCHMEN and SQUADRON than this one did) I will show why I believe archetypal criticism to be a successful mediator between the two extremes, thanks to its concentration on the aspects of *form.*

MERIT RAISED PART II

Ethical criticism, as I define the term, centers around the idea that great literature always has an ethical component superior to what is found in "non-literature." This superiority may range from the expectation that literature should actually give viable moral guidelines to the reader to the less ambitious feeling that it should simply be capable of presenting interesting moral dilemnas. Though no one can prove such things, I tend to believe that ethical criticism is probably the means by which most non-critics judge works for literary worth, if only because the ethical criterion is the one most students learn at the secondary educational level, when teachers are trying to explain why literature that isn't necessarily "fun" possesses "literary merit." I suspect that whenever comics-readers speak highly of both WATCHMEN and SQUADRON SUPREME as works with "literary merit," they are doing so with the ethical criterion in mind, given that both works are dystopian stories about the abuse of power by superheroes in what purports to be the "real world."

In the first part of MERIT RAISED I wrote that I considered one of these two meritorious and the other not so much, but I like to think that my likes and dislikes are appropriate according to the literary mode of each work. I might simplify by saying that if I labeled WATCHMEN "drama" and SQUADON "melodrama," I would still confer "literary merit" on both if both were good examples of those respective modes-- but SQUADRON doesn't get the nod because it's "bad melodrama." (Of course, as I've been using a lot of Frye's more complicated terms lately, the above simplification doesn't really describe what I'm getting at.)

In "Notes Toward a Superhero Idiom," I mentioned that the Moore/Gibbons WATCHMEN conforms to the literary mode that Frye terms "irony," which stresses protagonists lack significant "power of action." And though WATCHMEN's characters possess any number of extraordinary abilities, for the most part none of them has the slightest idea what to do with them. Merely following the form of irony, of course, does not automatically confer literary merit (though I'll allude to some critics who think so). WATCHMEN is superior because the Moore/Gibbons characters fully embody ironic commentaries on the nature of power, be it Rorschach's individualistic authoritarianism, Ozymandias' lust for godhood or Doctor Manhattan's alienation from the normal strictures of time and space.

Also, in "Notes" I alluded to the mode of the "high mimetic," in which the noble hero proper to the romance-mode begins to come under the onus of social critique. This would be the mode proper to SQUADRON, written by Mark Gruenwald and illustrated principally by Bob Hall and Paul Ryan (for simplicity's sake I'll refer to each work as if Moore and Gruenwald were the sole authors, respectively). Now, to be a meritorious execution of this mode, the author would have to formulate characters who possessed significant power of action and could use it to some positive ends, even if they were ultimately frustrated in their goals. But though this mode has been well executed in comic books (Miller's DARK KNIGHT, Busiek's ASTRO CITY). SQUADRON lacks any merit according to its mode. No ethical theme, not even one appropriate to simple melodrama, can be adduced from Gruenwald's slapdash characterizations of his well-intentioned totalitarian superheroes. Super-scientist Tom Thumb agonizes over the ethics of stealing a life-saving serum from a super-villain, the Golden Archer brainwashes his superheroine girlfriend into loving him, Hyperion fights his evil doppelganger-- all of these are executed with heavy-handed seriousness, and probably have even less ethical relevance than a commonplace superhero book lacking such an overtly-portentous theme.

The reason that I continually harp upon excellence within each proper mode is because ethical criticism has a "dark side" of sorts, which I term "ideological criticism." In this species of criticism, as exemplified by certain essays of Gary Groth, the Moore work would automatically be superior for critiquing the very idea of superheroes, while the Gruenwald work would automatically be inferior for taking superheroes seriously. And though I disagree with those fans who regard SQUADRON highly as any kind of ethical statement, I find the mistakes of ideological criticism to be far more egregious.

Returning to the overall problems of ethical criticism itself, while it is probably the "go-to" criterion for most non-critics, clearly ethics by itself is inadequate to describe the multifarous products of the literary canon, much less works aspiring to be part of that canon. (And if it were, then, then surely both WATCHMEN and SQUADRON might be disallowed as literature because studies of power-abuse in real-world circumstances would clearly take precedence over any works about superheroes.) In the next essay I'll deal with a form of criticism that evolved in opposition to the ethical breed.