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2006 Tolkien Conference

2004 Summer Conference

Second Spring

THE RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER

Stratford Caldecott

Stand up and keep your childishness:
Read all the pedants’ screeds and strictures;
But don’t believe in anything
That can’t be told in coloured pictures.

These words by G.K. Chesterton were inscribed by him in a book illustrated by Randolph Caldecott (a distant relative of your humble servant).  To get from there to American superhero comics in one mighty bound is my intention, though one that I feel needs some justification.

What is the fascination of the superheroes?  Those who don’t feel it will never know.  Of course, once can give the obvious explanation: many adolescent boys (or permanently adolescent boys) like to fantasize about having big muscles and beating up bad guys.  The comics I used to read always had advertisements for body-building regimes and high-protein supplements designed to prevent bullies kicking sand in your face on the beach.  The typical superhero costume, male or female, leaves very little to the imagination.  In recent decades the violence and eroticism of the comics has increased and intensified, until many of them are virtually pornographic.  So, yes, there is that.

But there are some other, less disreputable reasons for getting hooked on comics.  The artwork is actually, in many cases, extremely good.  This is a genuine art form, and many people collect comics almost entirely by artist (in my case I was particularly interested in Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, Johnny Romita, John Buscema, John Byrne).  Roy Lichtenstein lifted some (not very good) frames from comic books and turned them into fine art, but any real comics fan could have pointed to a hundred better examples.  I remember that the draftsmanship of Neal Adams on Batman and Green Lantern helped me see the world, its light and shadows, in quite a new way.  Of course, whole decades of comic art have passed me by entirely, but I still have boxes full of my favourite examples tucked away somewhere.

It is worth mentioning that there is a long tradition of American comic art that has nothing at all to do with muscles or superheroic powers (from Little Nemo through Peanuts to a personal favourite, Calvin and Hobbes).  Let me put in a plug, also, for a hero completely lacking in magical superpowers and who seemed to do very well without a tight-fitting costume. Dan Dare was a British space pilot modelled on the fighter aces of the RAF in World War II, who appeared in the Eagle in the 1950s and 60s from the brilliantly imaginative pen of Frank Hampson, voted many times the best comic-book artist of all time. Graphic novels of all sorts have recently exploded as a genre, cross-fertilizing in some cases with Japanese manga, and these deserve serious critical attention. But not here, not now.

 

A Modern Mythology?

Another big reason for liking the superhero comics goes back to ancient mythology.  Indeed Superman, the primordial hero of this type, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster in the 1930s (just on the eve of the War), was consciously modelled on Hercules and Samson.  Whereas the Nietzschean ubermensch put morality behind him as something for weaklings, Superman demonstrated that the perfect human being would be more rather than less moral than everyone else.  Although Supes never darkened the doors of any church, Christians might recognize in his abilities (of which he had a fairly full deck: superspeed, flying, strength, invulnerability, x-ray vision, heat vision, etc.) a faint image of the impassibility, subtlety, agility, and beatific vision of the resurrected.  It was consoling to think that, if Aquinas was right, we would one day be able to beat even Superman at his own game.

All through the second half of the twentieth century, Superman remained an emblem for “Truth, Justice and the American Way”, an incarnation of the values of the West.  Only towards the end of that period did the moral conflicts and compromises that had already begun to afflict his proliferating superhero progeny in other comic books start to tarnish the purity of the Man of Steel.  The recent TV retelling of his early years as a farm boy and college student, Smallville, managed to keep the theme of purity going for quite a while, despite a few sleazy moments. (Interestingly, the series turned out to be largely about the moral ambiguity of Clark Kent’s seemingly necessary decision to preserve his secret identity by lying, even to his best friend. The lie corrupts his friendship with the young Lex Luthor, turning Lex by gradual stages into his arch enemy and nemesis.)

Superman aside, the mythological component of the comics remained rather thin until the advent of the publisher Marvel (or rather its relaunch) in the 1960s under the leadership of master storyteller Stan Lee, inventor among others of The Fantastic Four, the Hulk and Spider-Man.  These stories still depended on characters with superpowers, but the human dimension was more interesting (Spider-Man was something of a miserable misfit even in his superhero persona, making him easier for most teenagers to identify with).  The mythological dimension was also considerably enriched; in fact Marvel raided world mythologies for ideas without compunction.  Jack Kirby (d. 1994), an artist who worked with Lee, loved pantheons, whether traditional or invented, as the names of his characters suggest: Thor, Hercules, the Inhumans, the New Gods, the Forever People….  The art of superhero costume design reached new heights under Kirby. Costume was, of course, de rigeur among superheroes, since each had to establish a clear identity. Since most heroes tended to be of a similar physical type (lantern-jawed, mighty-thewed) the costume was emblematic, and a suitably evocative name helped to establish the brand.

Pre-eminent among Marvel heroes are the blue-costumed Fantastic Four. Whether consciously or not, Lee and Kirby seem to have based the foursome on the four traditional elements of nature: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Reed Richards or “Mr Fantastic”, the leader of the team, is both a brilliant scientist and able to stretch and flow like water. His wife, originally Sue Storm, called “The Invisible Girl”, can disappear into thin air and project force-fields. Her brother, Johnny, is known as “The Human Torch”. Finally Ben Grimm is “The Thing”, a walking pile of orange rubble with enormous strength. The Silver Surfer, a character who originated in The Fantastic Four and later got his own book, corresponds to the fifth and more cosmic element, Ether.

 

Rider of the Spaceways

The Surfer was one of Kirby’s inventions, a silver-skinned alien on a flying surfboard endowed with the “Power Cosmic” (the ability to play around with – reshape and transform – matter and energy).  This meant he could generate really big explosions if needed, and was basically much more powerful than most other Marvel characters, if he used his full strength.  But what made him interesting was that he usually didn’t.  The Surfer was a victim.  We’ll come back to that.

But why a surfer?  True, it was the era of the Beachboys (the Surfer made his first appearance in 1965).  It also looked very cool when he summoned his board while jumping into the air and soared away.  The theory behind this was that the cosmos is a great sea of energies, on which the Surfer could skim and navigate.  His original role was that of Herald to the planet-eating predator, Galactus: a giant in an emblematic, hi-tech purple costume who needed to consume large amounts of life-energy to survive.  In Kirby’s mythopoetic imagination Galactus was “Power”.  Kirby saw the Surfer as a being of pure energy created by Galactus, his task being to search out planets for his master to devour.  For the original 18-book series devoted to the Surfer, which appeared without Kirby (who returned only for the final episode), Lee developed the back-story of the character further. Instead of being created by Galactus, the Surfer had volunteered to serve Galactus in order to save his home planet Zenn-La. The story was told in the first issue of the new comic book in 1968.

In his first appearance, the Surfer brings Galactus to earth, but out of pity for the humans turns against his master – for which crime he is sentenced never more to roam the spaceways, but to be confined to earth behind an invisible barrier. His compassion, coupled with the enmity of those he tries to save and his longing for his beloved Shalla Bal back on Zenn-La remained consistent features of the series.  Like Spider-Man, only more so, the Surfer has few, if any friends.  His weird appearance and immense power causes him to be feared and misunderstood.  Every superhero comic has to contain at least one battle, but most of the fights in The Silver Surfer are due to his being attacked through some misunderstanding, and having to defend himself. 

The character of the Surfer has nobility, despite his occasional bursts of uncontrolled anger and the frequent recourse to self-pitying monologue. In the third issue, the spiritual dimension comes to the fore, with the appearance of the devil himself, Mephisto, who uses Shalla Bal as bait in a trap for the Surfer.  He gives his reasons on page 20: “SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME – SELDOM HAVE I SENSED SUCH GOODNESS OF SOUL – SUCH PURITY OF SPIRIT – AS I SENSE WITHIN THE SILVER SURFER.  ALL THAT YOU ARE – ALL THAT YOU STAND FOR – IS ABHORRENT TO THE LORD OF THE LOWER DEPTHS!  SO LONG AS YOU EXIST, MEPHISTO’S SCHEME SUPREME WILL EVER BE IN JEOPARDY!”  It seems that mankind is near to complete submission to the devil’s will, and the Surfer stands in the way as a beacon of uncorrupted moral goodness.

The Surfer descends into hell, unafraid of anything Mephisto can do to him (“YOU CAN DO NO MORE THAN SLAY ME!”), and unmoved by the temptations he offers (wealth, women and power).  Implanted in Mephisto’s brain for a battle of wills, the Surfer is victorious.  Even the temptation of being reunited with Shalla Bal is ineffective, since as they both know, “HOW CAN LOVE HAVE MEANING IF IT COSTS YOUR VERY SOUL??”  Separated by a universe, they will belong to each other forever, and this bond Mephisto cannot destroy.

The Surfer thus has saintly attributes, but he is far from perfect. In issue 15, after jumping too quickly to the conclusion that the Fantastic Four have betrayed his trust, the Surfer muses: “WAS I TOO HUMAN…OR…NOT HUMAN ENOUGH?  The story and dialogue of the classic Surfer comics were always concerned with the ambiguity of human nature and existence: a humanity that tears itself apart with war and greed, that fears the stranger and inflicts pain without thinking, yet rises to great heights of virtue and wisdom, as though yet to “come of age” as a species.  What is of interest about the comic is not just the artistry of the pages, and certainly not the quality of the writing, but the Big Questions raised about our existence in a majestic, unpredictable, beautiful cosmos.  Despite all the alien species encountered, somehow humanity always remains special, our freedom and our inviolable conscience the pivot of every story. 

I have been writing only of the classic Surfer.  Of his more recent appearances I know much less.  The 18 issues I referred to have become collectibles.  In 1987 he was given a new series, presaged in 1978 by a Kirby-Lee graphic novel in which he regains the freedom of space in the service of Galactus.  For this novel, the whole story was revised somewhat, but the great Surfer themes remain.  As Lee explained in his Preface, “Ever since I first saw our gleaming sky-rider, when Jack placed the initial drawing on my desk, I felt he had to represent more than the typical comicbook hero.  Somehow or other, Jack had imbued this new, unique, totally arresting fictional figure with a spiritual quality, a sense of nobility, a feeling of almost religious fervor in his attitude and his demeanor.”  The closing words of the comic are these: “ONLY TRUTH IS CONSTANT!  ONLY FAITH ENDURES!  AND ONLY LOVE CAN SAVE THEM – BUT WHERE CAN LOVE BE FOUND?” “FOR ONE SHINING SECOND OF ETERNITY, THE WORLD KNEW SUCH A LOVE!  BUT WHAT A PRICE WAS PAID!”

Conclusion

I wonder if anyone has written a thesis on Stan Lee as a moral influence on our times.  His perennial themes are the goodness and uniqueness of the human person, the supreme importance of self-giving love, the challenge of making moral choices in a fallen world.  In the recent spate of comic-book movies based on some of his most popular characters he appears in a series of cameos.  For example, in Spider-Man 3, the immensely successful conclusion of this trio of films about the battle between good and evil (finally in the soul of the hero himself), he appears alongside Spider-Man’s alter ego Peter Parker looking up at a billboard praising Spidey’s achievements and comments, “You see, one man can make a difference.”  It is the message he wants to get across in all his work, a message he managed to convey in coloured pictures.  We don’t have to despair in the face of overwhelming evil or the impersonal scale of modern society.  Life will be a struggle, but it is worth fighting for purity, for nobility of soul, for justice, for kindness.  Chivalry lives.  The greatest heroes are ordinary people like us.  Grace can strike anyone, like a gift of superpowers from the bite of a spider or a burst of radiation; the question is how we will respond to it. Will we become a hero or a villain?  In the words of Spider-Man, “You always have a choice.”

Kids around the world have received a moral education from Lee’s comics.  It is just a pity they often haven’t had it from anyone else.