{"id":16161,"date":"2023-01-09T11:08:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T16:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=16161"},"modified":"2023-01-09T11:15:47","modified_gmt":"2023-01-09T16:15:47","slug":"where-comics-meet-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/where-comics-meet-classics\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Comics Meet Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Many of the students who take Associate Professor of English Stanley Blair\u2019s general education course The Literary Origins of the DC Justice League are already familiar with the comic book characters they discuss. But while the students might know about contemporary superheroes on film and TV, few know about the literary origins of those heroes\u2014not how the characters became<\/em> superheroes, but how their creators came up with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe question that I ask students at the beginning of the course and that guides their research is this: \u2018Everyone knows that the film and TV superheroes come from earlier comic book superheroes, but where did the comic book superheroes come from?\u2019\u201d says Blair. \u201cThe answer,\u201d he says, \u201cis a combination of classical literature, popular pulp fiction of the early 20th century, and film.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the semester, Blair\u2019s students read excerpts from works by Homer, Plato, Sir Thomas Malory (of King Arthur fame), Edgar Allan Poe, and others. One of the discussions that is often eye-opening for students is when Blair reviews each character\u2019s first comic book appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe end by analyzing elements of the first page of the superhero\u2019s first comic book appearance in terms of where their characteristics come from in classical literature, popular literature, and film,\u201d says Blair. \u201cBy the end of that exercise, students are amazed that they can read this old comic book critically in terms of specific source influences, something most readers can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair created the course, which is open to students from all majors, because he believes the study of literature enriches one\u2019s general knowledge and enables individuals to gain a critical perspective on their own experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Case in point: One of Blair\u2019s students, senior accounting major Zach Francese, went to Six Flags to ride the Superman: Ride of Steel roller coaster. While waiting in line, Francese began telling his girlfriend about something that had recently been discussed in class: Superman\u2019s origin on the planet Krypton and his being sent to Earth as paralleling the birth and infancy of Moses in the book of Exodus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuperman\u2019s creators were Jewish,\u201d says Blair, \u201cso it\u2019s reasonable to infer that Moses would have had an influence on their development of the character.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blair said that Francese made a further connection to the class when he explained that the formulation of Superman\u2019s Kryptonian name, Kal-El, paralleled other biblical names like Gabri-el and Micha-el, with the \u201cEl\u201d signifying \u201cgod\u201d in ancient Hebrew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCritical thinking is something we try to foster throughout the general education curriculum,\u201d says Blair. \u201cWhen students bring up reading assignments while waiting in line for a roller coaster, that suggests a way of thinking critically about, and observing critically, the culture in which we live.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Blair himself was a fan of Marvel Comics growing up, he thought that the DC Comics made for a better literature course. Many of the Marvel characters that students know about nowadays emerged after World War II and involved exposure to some form of radiation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat might be the gamma radiation that causes Bruce Banner to turn into the Hulk or Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider,\u201d says Blair. \u201cIn that sense, those kinds of superheroes are an American response to the age of atomic weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DC superheroes such as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, on the other hand, were created before the U.S. entered World War II and have a variety of other scientific explanations for their origins as superheroes. Therefore, they\u2019re a little easier for non-English majors to connect to classical literature in a general education literature requirement course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor example,\u201d says Blair, \u201cSuperman\u2019s superpowers on Earth have to do with science-based explanations like different planets\u2019 gravities and atmospheres, as also depicted in Edgar Rice Burroughs\u2019 1917 novel A Princess of Mars<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, thanks to the popularity of his Literary Origins of the DC Justice League course, Blair is looking to expand the number of figures that are in it and include some Marvel characters\u2014even some villains. His eventual goal is to develop his comic book course offerings into a textbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Did You Know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

Batman\u2019s Beginnings<\/h2>\n\n\n

In the first installment of the Warner Bros. Batman<\/em> film franchise in 1989, a mugger asks the caped crusader, \u201cWho are you?,\u201d to which actor Michael Keaton\u2019s character replies, \u201cI\u2019m Batman.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While most fans know Batman\u2019s origin story as being a creation of billionaire Bruce Wayne as vengeance on the criminals who killed his parents, few might realize that the character itself is woven from two disparate threads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those is Zorro, whose alter ego is Don Diego Vega, the richest landowner in Spanish colonial Alta California. Zorro is a masked vigilante who vows to \u201cavenge the helpless, to punish cruel politicians, to aid the oppressed\u201d\u2014not unlike Batman. In fact, many Batman films and TV shows often have a Zorro reference, such as the movie that\u2019s playing in the theater the night that Bruce Wayne\u2019s parents are murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Batman\u2019s creators were influenced by the 1920 silent film The Mark of Zorro<\/em>, which in turn was based on a novel published one year earlier by Johnston McCauley.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other source for Batman\u2019s character is The Shadow<\/em>, who appeared on radio and in pulp fiction and films. The Shadow has an alter ego too: Lamont Cranston, a wealthy \u201cman-about-town\u201d who gets driven around in limousines. In the 1937 film The Shadow Strikes<\/em>, Cranston also has a personal assistant with a British accent named Henry Hendricks\u2014a possible inspiration for Bruce Wayne\u2019s butler, Alfred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inside a course that explores the literary origins of DC Comics\u2019 Justice League characters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":16171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":29,\"y\":20}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-16161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-currents","tag-alumni-student-faculty"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Currents","issue":"Fall\/Winter 2022","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16161"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16170,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16161\/revisions\/16170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}