‘Superheroes in Gotham’ Review
With modern cities came crime and the invention of heroes to combat it—heroes who embodied part of the era’s immigrant dream
New York
The development of the modern city did marvels for the evolution of fantasy. Out of the city’s compressed crowds and conflicts came exotic new possibilities for villainy along with the need for ever-more powerful heroes. That is how the detective came into being—figures such as Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin or Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, who would scrutinize the city’s chaotic arrays of suspects and motives and discern a simple underlying order. It is also where the superhero was born, as we are reminded by the exhibition “Superheroes in Gotham” at the New-York Historical Society (through Feb. 21).
Between 1938 and 1941, the exhibition points out, a group of imaginary men (and at least one woman) in tights and disguises, wearing capes or costumes, came into being in the American city—and in particular, in New York City—figures who were blessed or cursed with peculiar abilities and weaknesses. Their ambition was to defeat the extravagantly baroque villains of the 20th-century city—not just gangs of thugs and thieves, but megalomaniacal madmen, mutants with evil designs, and eventually aliens bent on intergalactic conquest.
At this exhibition, we see those heroes take their first steps. Included is the first issue of Action Comics (June 1938), in which Superman lifts up a green sedan as if to toss it against the rocks as onlookers flee. Shown, too, is Batman No. 1 (Spring, 1940), in which the darkly cloaked masked crusader and his more colorfully attired sidekick swoop down on ropes, a blood-red city skyline in the distance.
Captain America’s first appearance, dressed in red, white and blue, is overseas: He brings the battle to Nazi headquarters by slugging Adolf Hitler—this in a March 1941 issue, when England was still suffering under the Blitz and the U.S. was trying to avoid getting involved. A later wave of New York-bred heroes is also here—Spider-Man (b. 1962) and Iron Man (b. 1963). So is Wonder Woman (b. 1941), though she doesn’t really fit the exhibition’s New York focus.
The other heroes, though, are native Gothamites. Captain America was born on New York’s Lower East Side. Spider-Man (as Peter Parker) lived in Queens and went to school in Manhattan. Superman was born on Krypton, but Clark Kent’s newspaper, the Daily Planet, bore an uncanny resemblance to the New York Daily News. As for Batman, Bruce Wayne came to his costumed calling as a child after his parents were shot and killed on a dark city street. Iron Man also called New York home: His family’s munitions plant was in Queens, and his mansion was apparently modeled after the Frick mansion (now museum) on Fifth Avenue.
New York was also where these figures were conceived and marketed, where companies like DC Comics, along with their writers and artists made their home. Superman may have been dreamed up by two high-school friends in Cleveland— Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster—but they brought him to New York (the Royal typewriter that Siegel used to write Superman scripts while commuting between the two cities is on display here). One creator of Batman, Bob Kane, was born in New York; another— Bill Finger—lived in the Bronx. In fact, in that founding generation, Will Eisner, Stan Lee, Kane and Finger had all attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx.
Most of the early comic-book creators also shared another characteristic: They were children of Jewish immigrants; and they apparently inspired other children of Jewish immigrants. One of the intriguing artifacts on display here is a Hebrew book about the history of the Jews (not a prayer book as is stated) on which a 9-year-old Mort Gerbergdoodled pencil drawings of Batman in 1940. Later, as a professional cartoonist, he kept returning to that subject. We also see drawings from 1940 by an 11-year-old Jules Feifferwho was similarly entranced, inventing his own superheroes: Ultraman, American Man. As for the professional cartoonists who were drawing heroes at the same time, many changed their names to cloak their Jewish backgrounds: Bob Kane had been Robert Kahn,Stan Lee had been Stan Lieber, Jack Kirby had been Jacob Kurtzberg.
Though this history has begun to be explored by a number of books in the past decade, it is deftly told by the curators, Debra Schmidt Bach and Nina Nazionale, and is supplemented by original artwork, a sampling of these superheroes in international comics, some artifacts from television shows, and video and audio clips of their adventures in radio, television, animated cartoons and film. The campy “Batman” TV show of the 1960s gets some disproportionate attention because of that show’s gleaming black Batmobile on display in the Historical Society’s entrance hall.
Unfortunately, the exhibition tends to note facts more readily than interpret them, feeling, perhaps, that its audience will be intrigued enough by the array of artifacts and the memories they evoke. The importance of the city for superheroes also seems more profound than a reason the exhibition provides: that cities were necessary for their exploits (“You can’t ‘leap tall buildings’ without tall buildings”).
The city is, more likely, related to the kinds of aspiration these fantastical beings represented. It has been noted that earlier 20th-century heroes like Flash Gordon were Americans who went to other worlds to vanquish evil; but Superman, in contrast, was an alien (born on Krypton) who had arrived among us. He was an immigrant with a mission. So too, were the parents of the superheroes’ creators. And like their characters, as these artists and writers defined themselves as first-generation Americans, they too may have imagined secret identities; so many of them changed their names because they intended, like their characters, to become inseparable from the nation then taking shape, venturing bravely into careers as the creators of caped crusaders. They may have also imagined that in order to become fully integrated into American society, they had to be as instrumental as the superheroes in protecting their new land. As the exhibition shows, many heroes were drafted (so to speak) to serve the war effort (as were many of their creators), where they would face off against real megalomaniacal madmen. One cover here shows Superman striding a globe, triumphantly grasping a horrified Hitler and terrified Tojo. Special editions of the comics were also created for the armed services; and since literacy in the Army was an issue, some incorporated lessons in reading comprehension.
The city was where these heroes came from, though, and where they would return. It was part of that era’s immigrant dream, an arena of success. Of course, there were no guarantees: The city in all its incarnations could be threatening and occasionally even threatened. Often New York City itself was held hostage in the comics. One villain flooded Manhattan with a tidal wave; a crime syndicate destroyed all Manhattan bridges; a Nazi war criminal imprisoned the city in a giant bubble and levitated it into the sky. Superheroes may have grown out of the city, but the city also needed superheroes: without their presence, these tales prove, the city couldn’t have survived at all.
Today, of course, the villains are different. So are the comics (it would have been intriguing for the exhibition to begin to explore these differences). So too may be immigrant dreams. But those early myths still have power, and this exhibition shows them as they emerge.
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://sandropiancone.com/images/SAN_D2-1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Sandro Piancone[/author_info] [/author]
