PB1A on Superhero Comics

Today’s movie theaters would be incomplete without a superhero action movie. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe having 20 films released and many more on the way, it has become the highest grossing film franchise of all time. Along with the Marvel movies, DC has been giving its own superheroes the movie treatment and both franchises have released multiple television shows. It’s hard to imagine a time before all of this, but the movies would be nothing without their comic book origins, so that’s what I am going to analyze for my genre.

There are plenty of different superheroes I could pick for analysis but I’ll go with my two favorite heroes, the Flash and Captain America. In my research I found out that there have been many different stories with many different writers, even for the same characters. But overall superhero comics have the same style to them. I’m sure you’ve seen it plenty of times. They have colorful pages with many different pictures of what’s going on in the story. But these pictures are separated into panels so that it’s easier to follow. And it wouldn’t be a textual genre unless there was text, and as the Flash comic cover shows, the story is told by the characters dialogue in text bubbles. One feature of comics that hasn’t remained quite the same is the tone. When comics were first issued, they had a light-hearted feel and, since it was during world war two, they were very patriotic. But as the years progress and the readers got older, they became darker and more symbolic of different ideas. But despite these changes over time, the purpose has always been the same. To entertain its readers.

But what really makes a superhero comic a superhero comic? It can’t be the color or the text bubbles, because any other comic has those. And it’s not unique in telling a story. So how would we know we’re reading a superhero comic? Well to start, they have a clear distinction of good versus evil. Again, looking at the Flash comic, the text bubble says “Instead of being a defender of the law -- he’s a law-breaker!” This distinctly sets up the to opposite ideals. And in case you didn’t know, that character in yellow is called the reverse flash, as if it wasn’t obvious enough. Another clear characteristic of superhero comics is the main character has superhuman abilities or skills. In the Flash’s case he has incredible speed, and Captain America has super-human strength. Superheroes also tend to have dark or depressing backstories that show how or why these characters became heroes. I’m sure everyone knows Batman’s backstory, his parents were killed during a robbery so to get justice he became Batman (to summarize). Most superheroes have a backstory similar to Batman’s, or at least have the characters fall to their lowest before they become super. The main protagonists also tend to have a symbol to easily remember them by. The Flash has his lightning bolt and Captain America his iconic shield. One last convention of superhero comics is that the heroes have to have a secret identity in order to keep people safe. Everyone loves to make fun of Superman’s alter-ego Clark Kent because it’s just him wearing glasses. But without those everyone would know his secret.

The reason I chose superhero comics is because I love superheroes and the movies and television shows. So I thought it would be interesting to do some research on their origins and what made them superheroes. What I discovered was that, although the comics have different features, it’s the heroes within the pages that makes superhero comics unique from any other style of comic.