Villain
Valhalla
The Mythic Dimension of
Superman's Foes
Robert M. Price
It should come as no surprise to any comic book fans that
our favorite characters are full of mythic symbolism. Indeed, they are modern
myths. They are not, mind you, merely modern counterparts to ancient mythology.
No, they are true mythology in their own right. Notice how easily superheroes
segue over into "crossovers" with ancient mythology: Thor, Hercules,
Wonder Woman, Atlas, Son of Vulcan, etc., etc. It is equally true of heroes and
villains in the comics. I want to undertake a brief survey of Superman's
historic villains, pointing out how they symbolize different aspects of evil.
If they didn't, they'd get pretty monotonous fast.
As for
the Man of Steel himself, he is obviously a divine savior figure like Jesus
Christ or Gautama Buddha. Other comic figures like him include Thor, the Silver
Surfer, and the Spectre. He is a sinless and selfless visitor from outside who
exists only to serve humanity, which he rejoices to do. Many of his enemies are
opposites of this ideal in various ways. In the old days when Superman fought
simple crooks, they were just one-dimensional indices of his power. He
demonstrated his power by the number of them he could foil. But then came the
Faustian villains, especially the Ultra-Humanite. His name, of course,
is synonymous with Superman's! Ultra = Super. Human = Man. But "-ite"
implies he is pursuing a cause he has not yet attained. He seeks, by criminal
superscience, to attain what was not meant for him. He wants to say, with Henry
Frankenstein, "Now I know how it feels to be God!" The futility of
his quest is signaled right off the bat by his captivity to a wheelchair--he
lacks even the powers of a normal human. So the Ultra-Humanite is the symbol of
blasphemous hubris. Superman, by contrast, rejoices in what he is and
embraces his duty. He is not proud or arrogant. He is humble in the same way
God is humble. He can take his greatness for granted and get on with things.
Brainiac,
on the other hand, is a different sort of "Faust-freak" (Altered
States). He is like Victor Frankenstein in the Hammer Films series: he is a
genuine scientific pioneer who, however, happens to follow the non-ethical code
of Nazi Concentration Camp researchers. He wants knowledge above all things,
but he fails to see that one must rise to heights of knowledge through moral
perfection, because greater knowledge includes knowledge of one's moral
obligations. Brainiac, gathering tokens from planets, then destroying them,
holding populations captive, tries to satisfy his curiosity and a collector's
instinct most of us can identify with (have you ever thought about your action
figure collection as being like the little folks in the bottle city of
Kandor?). Brainiac has pursued knowledge as an idol, in Tillich's terms. He
wants to consume what he knows rather than be joined to it, as Plato said
happens between the knower and the known, the lover and the beloved. Thus it
was quite consistent when, already in the sixties, DC decided to retroactively
redefine Brainiac as an android! (As I rationalized to my daughter the other
day, that's why my Brainiac figure has blue skin, but Brainiac 5 has green
skin--they're not actually related!) It was more consistent still when in the
80s they had him shed his "Green Luthor" persona and look like a
machine, period.
Lex
Luthor, whom one might first imagine to be a second Ultra-Humanite, has two
different roles, one pre-Crisis, the other post. The Silver Age Luther (I don't
know enough about his predecessor) was almost incidentally a mad scientist. His
motivation was neither wealth nor godhood but (not-so-) simple revenge.
Losing his hair in a failed experiment, he scapegoated Superboy for it, and his
lust for vengeance (against fate or his own carelessness, perhaps) was
transferred to Superboy: "I have given a name to my pain..." Byrne
changed him completely. Byrne's Luthor is still not like the Ultra-Humanite,
since it is not super-humanity he wants but the glory of humanity, which is
usurped by gods like Superman, whom he wants to bring down. Power should be a
human game. Superman appears on the scene and by his very existence makes a
mockery of the power attainable by men. So he must go! Lex Luthor is like the
kind of atheist who wants there
not to be a god, because he can't stand sharing or yielding the spotlight. This
motivation comes through loud and clear in Kingdom Come, where Luthor
heads up the Humanity Liberation Front.
Metallo
and Hank Henshaw are variations on the Silver-Age Luthor model. Both
have lost something considerably more important than their hair. Luthor is,
after all, just Mel Cooley on the warpath. But, like Brainiac, though for much
different reasons, Henshaw and Metallo have lost their humanity. Henshaw blames
Superman for not being able to save his wife, an all-too-familiar sort of
gripe, as absurd as it is. (As when Larry King reproached Superman (Jerry
Seinfeld) for not cleaning up all the filth during a Metropolis garbage
strike!) Superman is just in Metallo's way as he goes on a rampage of revenge.
By the way, it is practically only these various shades of motivational nuance
that distinguish the chrome-machine Brainiac, the post-Byrne Metallo, and the
Henshaw Cyborg, all apparent refugees from Marvel's Phalanx Covenant.
The
Phantom Zone villains (General Zod, Jax-Ur (who is Luthor with a
mustache), etc.) are, like the old-time thugs and crooks, primarily indices of
Superman's power and, more importantly, his nobility. They are lessons of how
lucky we are that Kryptonian power fell into the hands of the Christlike
Kal-el, and not one of these bastards! When they briefly escape the Phantom
Zone every now and then, we are given the chance to see what might have been.
The same point is made in the series "Superman: The Dark Side."
Bizarro
Superman is another variation on that theme: this time, the point is that
it takes a good bit more than raw power to make a Superman. "Gods and
monsters"--what's the difference? Whether or not one suffers "the
sleep of reason."
The
greatest "index" character of all must be Doomsday, though he
is in fact hardly a character at all! Again, he is nothing but a narrative
function personified. If we ask the question, "How much does it take to
stop Superman?", Doomsday is not so much the answer as he is the question
given a form and a name. This is why he is not even provided an origin or
narrative motive throughout the whole original "Death of Superman"
series. He is there just to kill Superman. To me, the subsequent "Reign of
the Supermen" series was infinitely more interesting, with its splitting
up of the Superman character into its component parts (see Richard Reynolds's
discussion in Super-Heroes: A Modern Mythology).
The
future-based trio, the Legion of Super Villains, Cosmic King, Saturn
Queen, and Lightning Lord, are patently the "grown-up"
opposite numbers of the nobly teen-aged Legion of Super Heroes! They are
villains just because they are "old." They are, implicitly, the
future selves of Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, and Lightning Lad. This is all but
admitted when we eventually hear that Lightning Lord is the brother of
Lightning Lad, which in mythic terms, means another side of the same character.
But that's obvious enough any way you cut it.
Zha-Vam
is one of my all-time favorite Superman villains. Here I think we see Superman
as a symbol for humanism, the desire to stand on our own two feet, to let
science and critical thinking be our guide, and no longer to let ourselves be
captive to the narrow pedagogy of medievalism and superstition. The titan
Zha-Vam, the mightiest of Superman's enemies, was created by the Olympian gods
who foresaw the day when Superman's exploits would eclipse their own fame, and
they decided to prepare a champion to come forth in due season to win back
their glory. In a replay of the Pandora myth, all the gods contributed some
power to the red-bearded, 8-foot tall giant. His name, in a spoof of Captain
Marvel's Shazam, stood for his principle powers and their donors: Zeus,
Hercules, Achilles, Vulcan, Apollo, Mercury. He also had a belt with
multicolored segments, each with the letter of still more deities whose powers
he could call on temporarily. Superman never had a chance. Through three issues
(a rarity in the 1960s) he failed again and again till he decided to use brain,
not brawn, and snuck into Olympus incognito and negotiated with leftover gods
to give him a belt with powers Zha-Vam lacked. With these he beat him. Here, I
think, was the victory of humanity, whose powers are the hard-won products of
our own research and striving, against the Grand Inquisitor who would keep us
under numbing tutelage.
Another
favorite of mine was the pre-Crisis Atomic Skull--can you beat that for
a cheesy name? I love it! I understand him as Superman's counterpart to the
Joker-- he is a stigma-bearer whose curse has effectively shut him out of
humanity, and the only way he knows to react is sociopathy. If he cannot live a
normal life, neither will anyone else! He is not seeking revenge. Not even
trying to get compensation for what he has lost. And what he has really lost is
himself. He is beyond good and evil. But of course we are not, and we cannot
leave him at large.
Mr.
Mxyzptlk is beyond good and evil in an entirely different sense. His job is
to vex Superman and to test both his wits and his patience. He makes sure that
Superman (or should I say "Namrepus"?) doesn't get too big for his
britches. As a mythic being, he is most like Loki, the malicious prankster--or
even perhaps like Krishna, who embodies the most ingenious explanation of evil
ever thought up: God is kidding with you! Alan Moore, in his brilliant
"Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?," made this clear when he
had Mxyzptlk turn into a true villain at the end. He had before that
been just a pest, demonstrating that even Superman can be pestered.
There are
other villains who represent neither the human nor the superhuman elements, but
the subhuman. The Parasite is pretty much a ravening vampire. He became
what he is through no fault of his own, and he seeks no revenge. He seeks
only--lunch! And there is no snack as tasty as Superman! And then there is the
pre-Byrne Kryptonite Man (previously Kryptonite Kid in Superboy), who is
simply Superman's ubiquitous foe: Green Kryptonite itself. Here it is just
personified, given lines to say. And it's not a
bad idea.
But I
guess for me the most intriguing Superman villain of all is... Dr. Doom!
What a great scene Jim Shooter conjured in the second Superman/Spiderman
crossover when Superman confronts Doom in his embassy, and like Satan tempting
Jesus, Doom tries to win Superman over to his cause. Of course there is no way
Superman is going to give in, and Doom knows that, but he does score a major
point. He gives Superman something to think about when he says that the two of
them are the most powerful beings on the planet, and that given Superman's vast
powers, he is naive to think that he is not, in an important sense,
ruling
the world already!