Without Fear

By Crispin Sartwell

The Hulk managed to break all records for June movie openings, doing some $62 million of business on its first weekend. And in general, at least on screen, it's been quite the period for Marvel comics: Spiderman, Daredevil, and the X-Men, as well as the Hulk.

The classic rivalry in superhero comics has been between the companies Marvel and DC. DC got its start in the thirties, and has been known above all for Superman and Batman, though its stable also includes such crusaders for righteousness as Wonder Woman, Hawkman, and the Green Lantern.

Superman, who debuted nationally in Action Comics #1 in 1938, was a vision of perfection, with indefinitely huge strength of arm and character, faster than a speeding bullet and more handsome than a movie star. Superman was a hero for people who needed simple ideals and real hope: people emerging from the depression into World War II.

Marvel, under the direction of Stan Lee, introduced the next generation of the superhero (Hulk and Spider-Man debuted in 1962, X-Men in 1963, Daredevil in 1964). Disaffected, perhaps mentally ill, defective, subject to terrible mistakes in judgment and the occasional violation of the law, they emerged from the basically conformist and prosperous atmosphere of the fifties and early sixties, in which violations of the norm were simultaneously threatening and fascinating, and they made sense as the apparent consensus fragmented in the civil rights and peace movements.

My favorite, when I was but a wee lad, was Daredevil, the Man Without Fear (played by Ben Affleck in the film version), a blind guy who got around by bouncing down the street from car to car. The Hulk was a straight-up metaphor for the destructive and creative power of rage; in the seventies television series, Bill Bixby turned into Lou Ferrigno every time he got irritated.

The Marvel heroes were outsiders, with hidden demons known only to their readers, conflicted and confused. They were young, oppressed, and alienated. They presaged the mood of the country in the Vietnam era: suspicion of power and institutions, and finally a turn toward inwardness. This makes them good movie characters - certainly better than the terminally dull Superman - as Wolverine struggles to contain his rage or Spiderman blames himself for his uncle's death, there's actually something for the actor inhabiting the muscle suit to *do*.

This is an appropriate moment to revisit the Marvel hero. We're in an era of uncritical acceptance of the power of institutions, in which a president can rally a people to war and those people are actually unconcerned about whether he's telling the truth about the reasons. It seems a pretty sunny and conservative and confident moment, despite a hangover of vulnerability from 9/11 and the recently stalled economy.

But that's precisely the moment when anti-heroes are needed and comprehensible. There's no heroism in alienation when everyone's alienated. But when everyone seems to be happily stampeding in one direction, there's always a guy standing off on the edge of the herd wondering where they're all going and saying he doesn't feel like attending. That's essentially the only interesting person there, the only person whose existence doesn't seem redundant.

Certainly, we have our odd dissenting voices too, and I'm betting there are more American anarchists (for example) right now than at any point since 1886. They're young, they've got weird hair, and though they're angry they're full of love. In brief, they're X-Men.

In the sixties, mutants provided a stage for the comic book exploration of race relations. Now the X-Men present a tale of government paranoia, assassinations, violations of privacy and belligerence. They find themselves with adamantium skeletons or psionic abilities, which makes them reasonable opponents even for the officials who use infinite resources to try to track them down and kill them.

And though a movie is not a social movement, a popular movie is a pretty good index of people's longings. And that's why the return of the alienated superhero hints at refreshing possibilities.