A review by bleary
Last Night, a Superhero Saved My Life by Liesa Mignogna
5.0
There was a war, and the geeks won.
Even after Tim Burton's excellent Batman movies, and Bryan Singer's very good X-Men movie, superhero comics were still thought of as something for kids or adults who had missed a step in their cultural development. But somewhere between that and the first Iron Movie, everything changed. And what changed is this: a bunch of very smart people who grew up loving comic books had reached maturity. They became the dominant cultural voices of our time. And they used their position to announce that comics were cool.
Last Night A Superhero Saved My Life is a lovely collection of essays that straddles both of these realities. The authors are all successful writers, including luminaries such as Neil Gaiman and Jodi Picoult. In times past, some of those writers may have felt compelled to add caveats about the artistic merit of comics, or justified their love for superheros by talking about how comics led them to proper novels.
The closest we get to that here is an essay by Wonder Woman fan Carrie Vaughn, who releases some pent up rage, first at her fellow pre-schoolers who criticised her inaccurate playtime portrayal of the mighty Amazonian hero, and later at the college professors who told her that all genre fiction is not real fiction. Apart from that, there's no question in this book that DC and Marvel might not be as important as Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Wonder Woman features more than any other hero, which is maybe unsurprising in a genre that generally likes to stuff its female characters in a fridge. A generation of girls learned a lot from her, although there still seems to be some confusion about how she ran around in that bustier without popping out and giving herself a black eye. Jodi Picoult did, we learn, attempt to give Wonder Woman some straps when she was writing the comic, but DC refused.
Wonder Woman, Superman, Thor, and a few other characters like Underdog all appear in the capacity of joy. Because most comics in the 70s and 80s were about joy, starring clean-cut heroes with a simple morality. Some of the writers in this book discuss how these wonderful characters inspired them to believe in their dreams and themselves.
And then there are the other writers. The X-Men fans. The Batman fans. They're the ones who explain why genre fiction is often so important.
It's amazing and saddening how many of them tell the same story: I was a child, and I trusted adults to care for me, and they didn't. Some failed through neglect, others were more malicious. The only thing that kept me going were these stories, tales of heroes who lurk in the shadows and stop the bad guys. Heroes who had messed up childhoods too, and survived, and lived good lives.
The mythology of Gotham or the mutants is every bit as developed as any major text, and has a big advantage over the Bible: it's alive, and being constantly rewritten. These stories might seem like trash to some people, but to others they contain truth, hope, philosophy, insight, humour, catharsis and occasionally a full epiphany.
Sometimes they have been the only source of light when everything else in the world has been dark. The most moving stories in this volume are about how these superheroes have reached out through the garishly-coloured panels and literally saved someone's life.
It's not all gloom, and there are funny and moving stories of how comics have influenced first loves, led to wreckless childhood adventures, acted as imaginary friends, and provided valuable lessons about life and morality. Superhero comics are a multifaceted cultural entity that offer meaning on an archetypal level, adaptive to the reader's internalised contextualised expectations which develop circumstantially.
Or, as they say in comics, superheroes are here when we need them. No matter what.
Even after Tim Burton's excellent Batman movies, and Bryan Singer's very good X-Men movie, superhero comics were still thought of as something for kids or adults who had missed a step in their cultural development. But somewhere between that and the first Iron Movie, everything changed. And what changed is this: a bunch of very smart people who grew up loving comic books had reached maturity. They became the dominant cultural voices of our time. And they used their position to announce that comics were cool.
Last Night A Superhero Saved My Life is a lovely collection of essays that straddles both of these realities. The authors are all successful writers, including luminaries such as Neil Gaiman and Jodi Picoult. In times past, some of those writers may have felt compelled to add caveats about the artistic merit of comics, or justified their love for superheros by talking about how comics led them to proper novels.
The closest we get to that here is an essay by Wonder Woman fan Carrie Vaughn, who releases some pent up rage, first at her fellow pre-schoolers who criticised her inaccurate playtime portrayal of the mighty Amazonian hero, and later at the college professors who told her that all genre fiction is not real fiction. Apart from that, there's no question in this book that DC and Marvel might not be as important as Shakespeare and Chaucer.
Wonder Woman features more than any other hero, which is maybe unsurprising in a genre that generally likes to stuff its female characters in a fridge. A generation of girls learned a lot from her, although there still seems to be some confusion about how she ran around in that bustier without popping out and giving herself a black eye. Jodi Picoult did, we learn, attempt to give Wonder Woman some straps when she was writing the comic, but DC refused.
Wonder Woman, Superman, Thor, and a few other characters like Underdog all appear in the capacity of joy. Because most comics in the 70s and 80s were about joy, starring clean-cut heroes with a simple morality. Some of the writers in this book discuss how these wonderful characters inspired them to believe in their dreams and themselves.
And then there are the other writers. The X-Men fans. The Batman fans. They're the ones who explain why genre fiction is often so important.
It's amazing and saddening how many of them tell the same story: I was a child, and I trusted adults to care for me, and they didn't. Some failed through neglect, others were more malicious. The only thing that kept me going were these stories, tales of heroes who lurk in the shadows and stop the bad guys. Heroes who had messed up childhoods too, and survived, and lived good lives.
The mythology of Gotham or the mutants is every bit as developed as any major text, and has a big advantage over the Bible: it's alive, and being constantly rewritten. These stories might seem like trash to some people, but to others they contain truth, hope, philosophy, insight, humour, catharsis and occasionally a full epiphany.
Sometimes they have been the only source of light when everything else in the world has been dark. The most moving stories in this volume are about how these superheroes have reached out through the garishly-coloured panels and literally saved someone's life.
It's not all gloom, and there are funny and moving stories of how comics have influenced first loves, led to wreckless childhood adventures, acted as imaginary friends, and provided valuable lessons about life and morality. Superhero comics are a multifaceted cultural entity that offer meaning on an archetypal level, adaptive to the reader's internalised contextualised expectations which develop circumstantially.
Or, as they say in comics, superheroes are here when we need them. No matter what.