Our Gods Wear Spandex (20 page)

The Amazing Spider-Man
was a top seller in the 1960s, and was quickly adapted to other media. A popular (and faithful) television cartoon ran from 1967 to 1970. Spidey became a frequent guest star on the PBS kids' show
The Electric Company
in 1974. A live-action TV show ran on CBS in 1978, and two separate animated television series appeared in 1981. Another series appeared on Fox from 1994 to 1998, and a computer-animated mini-series ran on MTV in 2003. Of course, the
Spider-Man
feature films, directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire, were huge hits, and a third came out in 2007. The success of these films also inspired a series of wildly popular video games. As of this writing, Spider-Man's popularity shows no sign of waning.

Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created Marvel Comics' other great Messiah figure in an extremely roundabout way. In fact, the Silver Surfer began life as an afterthought. While developing a storyline in which the Fantastic Four confront Galactus, an enormous alien who travels from galaxy to galaxy feeding off the energy of entire planets, Kirby doodled in a metallic humanoid riding a surfboard, explaining to Lee that a character as momentous as Galactus needed a herald to announce his arrival.
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Lee loved the idea and used the Surfer as a scout who cruises the universe in search of planets for Galactus to devour. In 1966, the two appeared in an adventure that signalled the peak of Lee and Kirby's collaboration (“The Coming of Galactus,”
Fantastic Four
#48). In a multi-issue story, Silver Surfer encounters the Thing's blind girlfriend, Alicia Masters, who convinces him that humanity is
worth saving. He then rebels against Galactus and helps the Fantastic Four defeat him. As punishment, Galactus banishes the Surfer to Earth.

The Surfer became a recurring guest star in
The Fantastic Four
. When Marvel expanded their line in 1968, the character was given his own title. Lee's version of the Surfer was far different from Kirby's, however. Lee saw him as an explicitly Christlike figure and in 1969, even pitted him against Marvel's version of Satan, Mephisto (
Silver Surfer
#8). Without Kirby's ferocious imagination, some felt the Surfer lost his cosmic edge. The title was canceled after only eighteen issues. In 1978, Lee and Kirby later teamed up for Marvel's first original graphic novel,
The Silver Surfer
, and the Surfer regained his own series in 1988, which was a hit. A short-lived Surfer cartoon ran on the Fox network in 1998, and the character is featured in the second
Fantastic Four
film.

The second major superhero archetype, the Golem, comes to us from Jewish mysticism. The myth of the Golem harkens back to the ghettoes of Eastern Europe, where Jews periodically found themselves terrorized by hostile Gentiles. Legend has it that rabbis fashioned Golems out of clay and animated them using the magic of the Kabbalah. The Golems protected the Jews and punished their enemies. Implicit in the Golem folktales, however, is a certain danger for those the Golem is meant to protect.

But the most famous Golem story deals with Rabbi Loew, a Jewish leader in late 16th-century Prague, a thriving center for alchemy, Kabbalah, and other occult pursuits. Following a series of anti-Semitic attacks by hostile burghers, Loew formed a Golem taking mud from the Vltava river and breathing life into it using Kabbalistic gematria. He carved the Hebrew epithet
emet
(truth) into his forehead.

But the Golem, meant to protect the Jews, soon became too powerful for Loew to control and came to pose a threat to Jews and Gentiles alike. The burghers promised to stop the pogroms if Loew destroyed the Golem. Loew rubbed out the first letter of
emet
from the Golem's forehead, leaving the word
met
, meaning death.

The Golem was a favorite literary theme in both Christian and Jewish folktales, inspiring alchemists like Paracelsus, who sought to create a miniature version called the
Homunculus
(Latin for “little man”). Golem stories first appeared in print in 1847 in
Galerie der Sippurim
, a collection of Jewish folktales. A German film entitled
The Golem: How He Came into the World
was made by Paul Wegener in 1920. Some claim the Golems are the first robots in literature; others see them more them as zombies.

The Golem archetype in comics has its thematic roots in the legends, but with many important differences. In comics, the Golem is often an antihero. Golems like Batman are dangerous heroes who act out of a need for vengeance. Golems like Wolverine and Punisher are beserkers, whose rage causes them to kill almost indiscriminately. In addition to a need for revenge, Golems usually have some artificial component to them—a cybernetic aspect, or even something as simple as a disguise that fundamentally changes their nature. The Golem is a man transformed into something different, often through some arcane science.

The forces that drive the Golem make him liable to do harm to those he is supposed to protect. Historically, the Golem is an expression of rage, and ultimately, of powerlessness. There is often something weak or vulnerable about Golem characters, however, something that needs to be buttressed with armor. Marvel's Iron Man is actually Tony Stark, a Bruce Wayne-type playboy who needs to be encased in armor to protect his weak heart.
¹²⁵
Frank Miller brilliantly depicted Bruce Wayne in
Dark Knight
as a wounded child who constantly flashes back to the murder of his parents.

Golem characters like the Shadow became popular in the 1930s when organized crime was as frightening to the average citizen as the Cossacks were to Russian Jews. The three men most responsible for the creation and development of Batman—Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson—were all American-born Jews who probably heard the Golem stories at some time in their lives. They
translated the terror of the legends to the more generalized fear experienced by kids confronted by bullies and the real sense of helplessness experienced by honest citizens confronted by gangsters.

So what is it about the comics medium that it has given birth to so many Golems? The answer may be in the people who create them. Many of the leading writers in the early days of comics were diaspora Jews who created their heroes in the shadow of anti-Semitism. Stories of persecution were very fresh in the minds of the young Jews who created characters like Batman, the Thing, and the Hulk. Jewish or not, many comic readers (and creators) are often bookish and sensitive young lads, prone to harassment by bullies in their school days. The Golem archetype is essentially the byproduct of insecurity and wounded pride. It provides a satisfying emotional release for the bottled-up rage, frustration, and feelings of impotence that persecution and bullying engender.

The archetypal Golem figure, Batman, first appeared in
Detective Comics
#27 in 1939. Batman, elaborating on Gibson's depiction of the Shadow, was introduced as the alter ego of millionaire Bruce Wayne, whose parents are shot dead before his eyes. Creator Bob Kane originally portrayed Batman as ruthless and unrelenting. As his hero's popularity grew, however, Kane smoothed some of these rough edges and made him less of a vigilante. In 1940, he introduced Robin, Batman's boy sidekick, who is sworn into the crimefighting fraternity in a candlelight ceremony in
Detective Comics
#38.
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Robin was purportedly introduced as a character to whom young readers could relate. But there is something disturbing about scenarios in which an adult exposes a prepubescent boy to constant physical danger. The boy sidekick, though phased out in the Silver Age, remains grist for critics and satirists alike.
Saturday Night Live
features Robert Smigel's cartoon series
The Ambiguously Gay Duo
, which pokes fun at the pair's apparent gender confusion.

Batman's
innocuous and inoffensive post-Code stories, however, eventually drove bored writers to turn the series into a surreal, dreamlike sci-fi extravaganza. In the
late 1950s, the hero found himself in some of the strangest stories ever seen in comics—stories that were even more disturbing, in their own way, than the crime comics. Batman was plunged into other dimensions and pursued by creatures from other dimensions who plunge into ours. He became a bobble-headed alien, a medieval knight, a giant Godzilla-type monster, and discovered his psychic twin. A strange array of companions—Batwoman, Batgirl, Batmite, a Bathound, and even Bat-Ape—all made regular appearances. And all of this mind-numbing weirdness is rendered in the bland, childish, 50s DC house style, making the goings-on seem even more psychedelic and unsettling. As a result, Batman soon found himself teetering on the brink of cancellation.

In 1964, editor Julius Schwartz stepped in and returned Batman to urban crimefighting. He enlisted his favorite artist,
Flash
penciler Carmine Infantino, to redesign the series and sales started to pick up again. The “new-look” Batman caught the eye of Hollywood and a
Batman
TV series was planned, starring the decidedly un-buff character actor Adam West. This 1966 high-camp spoof became a monster hit and kicked off the first wave of “Batmania” (a nod to Beatlemania, two years prior). The show ran twice a week and Hollywood royalty began lining up to appear on it.

Batman
was part of a wave of Sixties fantasy and sci-fi shows that included
Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Addams Family, The Munsters, My Favorite Martian
, and
Star Trek
. During the Sixties, monsters and myths resurfaced as a part of the popular mind, and an unprecedented Dionysian explosion capped off the decade. Although its dreary aftermath swept away nearly everything that came before it, reruns of shows like
Batman
and
Star Trek
found their way into syndication and still inspire new generations of acolytes.

After Batmania petered out, Julius Schwartz decided to take the concept of the Dark Knight detective even further. He hired two writers—young, hip Denny O'Neil and veteran writer/artist Frank Robbins—to return Batman to the night. In 1971, O'Neil cast Batman as a virile adventurer and introduced the arch-villain Ra's Al Ghul to act as his nemesis (
Batman
#232). And Robbins' trademark airtight plotting and bizarre characters, including the grotesque Man-Bat (
Detective Comics
#400), provided needed depth. Both O'Neil and Robbins set their stories almost exclusively at night, and gave Batman a testosterone infusion that erased any lingering doubts as to his sexuality. Robbins dispensed with Robin by sending Dick Grayson off to college, while artist Neal
Adams redesigned the character as a virile, hairy-chested ladies man. Batman chugged along in that vein for the next decade and a half, until he was radically redefined in 1986 in Frank Miller's
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
.