A book about a hero, two disappointing books about superheroes

MARCH: Book Two by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell picks up where V1 ended, with Lewis becoming active in the civil-rights movement. Here we see him trying to integrate movie audiences, participating in Freedom Rides (except for a fluke of chance, he’d have been on one bus that got firebombed by white bigots) and participating in the groundwork for the March on Washington. While the struggle is dramatic, I was more intrigued by the politics within the movement, from debates over nonviolence (was it a tactic or a moral principle?), to the widespread conviction the March would be nothing — feel-good speeches by government-selected stooges, what good could it do?

MARVEL COMICS: The Untold Story by Sean Howe traces Marvel’s history from pulp and men’s magazine publisher Martin Goodman deciding to dabble in comics through the lean pre-FF years (Goodman might have shut the line down but he’d seen the industry revive before) through the glory years beginning with Fantastic Four #1, the chaos of the Bronze Age with multiple inexperienced staffers as editors in chief through Jim Shooter’s era as micromanager and onward to the Disney era (surprisingly there’s relatively little on the movies, or Marvel’s earlier TV ventures).

As a comics nerd this is fascinating but the book is so full of errors I can spot I’m not sure how much I can trust it. Among other errors, Howe confuses the Serpent Society mercenaries with the white supremacist Sons of the Serpent, identifies Nick Fury’s infinity formula (an immortality drug) as a Silver Age invention (it was late 1970s) and he claims Batman’s New Look era was a campy attempt to copy Marvel’s style (it wasn’t — see the link for details). That’s sub-par editing by everyone involved.

WONDER WOMAN UNBOUND: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine is the weakest of Tim Hanley’s books I’ve read so far. In fairness, that’s partly because I’ve read so much Wonder Woman and a fair amount about her so a lot of what Hanley has to say isn’t new. He does have some interesting material though, such as pointing out where anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham made a case for Batman and Robin being a homoerotic fantasy for gay kids, he assumed flat out that Wonder Woman was lesbian, no proof needed (having read The Ten Cent Plague on anti-comics censorship, I think Hanley’s more generous to Wertham than the man deserved, however).

Hanley also discusses how Ms. Magazine‘s book on Wonder Woman plays up the aspects of William Marston’s original philosophy they liked (women can do anything!) and ignored the bondage and female-dominance elements. And he does have a point that the George Perez’ reboot ignores one of the best ideas in Marston, that any woman with Amazon training could become their match and at least in theory equal Wonder Woman.

I disagree, however, with a lot of his interpretations. When Diana tells Steve she can’t marry him until she’s wiped crime from the Earth, Hanley sees her as really, really wanting to quit her job and be her housewife; I hear “Steve, what we have is wonderful, I don’t feel like changing anything” (even when she’s jealous over Steve’s interest in others, she’s not bemoaning having to stay single). And Hanley’s dead wrong to argue Marvel in the late 1960s/early Bronze Age embraced feminism where DC was stuck in the 1950s: while I wouldn’t recommend DC comics of that era to anyone who wants great female representation, Marvel was definitely the weaker (I’ll come back to this point in detail another time). Hanley’s also off arguing that Marvel, with its superior characterization (something it did have, no argument) didn’t do the silly romantic triangles DC did; that requires ignoring Sub-Mariner/Invisible Girl/Reed Richards, Peter Parker/Betty Brant/Ned Leeds, Matt Murdock/Karen Page/Foggy Nelson and quite a few more. Howe’s book does a much better job nailing Marvel for sexism. However Hanley did touch on a couple of points I’ll discuss later this week.

#SFWApro. Covers by Jack Kirby and H.G. Peters, all rights remain with current holders.