Características y Análisis del Inventario

In Lord’s profile of the typical singer in oral culture, he made careful note that per-formance is composition, and that the delivery of the epic poem is extremely fast, thereby suggesting that the singers are either geniuses or masters of some sort of composition foreign

to the literate world (The Singer of Tales 13, 17). Although the production of superhero comic books cannot be construed as performance, the environment in which those books were produced highly resembles oral performance for epic poets. Everyone involved with superhero comic books understood the necessity of quick production to satisfy the incredibly hungry consumer, and, consequently, writers and illustrators worked to produce dozens, if not over a hundred pages every month (editors were certainly at work on hundreds). With most creators working on multiple titles, they were required to quickly master information relevant to a wide variety of stories (whether that be Superman’s origin story or what hap-pened last week with the Green Lantern). Concomitantly, comic books were based in part on the strips that favored conflict at the height of action over extended exposition (so that every strip was considered exciting); the plot worked outside the conventions of high liter-ature, which favored gradual, linear development. Instead, superhero comic books were filled with flashbacks and always ended with the promise of more story to follow. Similarly, Ong suggests that the oral poet was working with a large catalogue of past information that caused them to structure stories in a way uniformly different from those of the literate world:

The poet will report a situation and only much later explain, often in detail, how it came to be.... Homer had a huge repertoire of episodes to string together but ... no way to organize them in chronological order.... What made a good epic poet was, among other things of course, first, tacit acceptance of the fact that episodic structure was the only way and the totally natural way of imagining and handling lengthy narrative, and, second, pos-session of supreme skill in managing flashbacks and other episodic techniques [Orality 139, 141].

Therefore, comic book stories of superheroes often seemed to defy the conventional logic of storytelling as defined by Aristotle²¹but did so in order to reinstate elements in previous stories and, therefore, was expected by readers (at least in variation) within subsequent stories. Writers worked to craft stories that were quintessentially Superman or Green Lantern, repeating the story at the same time they were expanding it to become a lengthy narrative.

For instance, retellings of the origin story of Batman demonstrate how writers may add substantially to a basic narrative framework and yet do so in such a way that subsequent stories seem a necessary outgrowth of the initial framework; the subtle additions enlarge the backstory and yet preserve the overall themes and the narrative devotion to the height of action.²²In the very first Batman story presented in Detective Comics #27, the rich and lazy Bruce Wayne rides with his friend, Commissioner Gordon, to a murder. Quickly bored with the routine nature of the investigation, the ineffectual Wayne leaves only to be replaced in the narrative by the costumed crimefighter Batman on the trail of the serial murderer who threatens the city’s business elite. This leads to Batman solving the crimes and the

“surprise” revelation that Batman is really Bruce Wayne. Although it reads more as a con-temporary variation on the story of Zorro and lacks the traumatic origin now so famously associated with Batman, the story establishes several formulae readily associated with Bat-man: his outsider status relative to officers of the law, his violent form of justice, and his inscrutable dual identity. Once Batman was recognized as a commercial success, he earned his own title, but the first issue only featured a mere two pages of origin story to set up more hard- boiled Batman action. Regardless, the origin story hardly read as a surprise, as it simply rearranged the above- mentioned tropes in the flashback to Wayne’s youth. An anonymous thief killed Wayne’s parents (demonstrating the failure of the system), Wayne devoted himself to fighting crime (making himself a vigilante), and put on a disguise to

frighten the cowardly lot of criminals (establishing a strange dynamic between Wayne and his alter ego, Batman).²³ In superhero comic books, this backward looping to the origin happens in a consistent way despite the fact that the story supposedly continues from issue to issue, thereby disrupting the conventional linear flow of time established in the literate world. A return to the origin point like this was often greeted with pleasure by readers, and revisions of the origin story were readily accepted not because new readers were unfamiliar with the origin; even if earlier issues were missed, they had sources such as other readers to fill in the details. Instead, they understood the backward looping as natural and saw the revisions not so much as revisions but as a natural outgrowth of the essential truth of the story. Producers of superhero comic books quickly rearranged tropes associated with the superhero and their character in particular in order to make a monthly deadline, and their on- the-fly composition prevented a self- conscious examination of their material. Thus, while change occurred, the changes resulted as a consequence of episodic return to the beginning, in order to more fully explain it and add relevance to the current story line.

Much of the same thing can be stated about some of the most famous Golden Age retellings of Batman’s story in “The Origin of Batman” in Batman #47 and “The First Bat-man” in Detective Comics #235.²⁴ In “The Origin of the Batman,” Batman becomes embroiled in an investigation that leads him to discover that Joe Chill, the murderer of his parents, is still alive and active as a criminal. During an elaborate sting to capture Chill, Batman reveals himself to Chill as Bruce Wayne. When Chill describes this turn of events to his associates, they kill him for inadvertently creating Batman, the greatest impediment to their criminal enterprises. In “The First Batman,” Batman discovers that his father wore a similar bat costume to a costume ball at which his father encountered and brought to justice a criminal named Lew Moxon; however, Moxon subsequently hired Joe Chill to kill the Waynes. Again, Moxon was still active and Batman sought to capture him but was frus-trated in his pursuit when Moxon ran in front of a truck and to his death (away from the sight of Bruce Wayne in his father’s

cos-tume). In addition to working with the above- mentioned tropes and the forever- unsatisfied desire to avenge his parents, these treatments of Batman’s origin merely expand the origin, chang-ing one’s sense of Batman only in addi-tive ways. This sort of repetition is the express concern of Umberto Eco in

“The Myth of Superman,” placing the

“problem” of Superman and all super-heroes within the context of a “con-sumer” culture — what he describes as an oneiric climate. Despite the fact that Superman seems mythic and incon-sumable (so that he might exist within the next variation on his adventure), he is consumed by virtue of being written as if part of a current time and place.

After using a philosophic overview of time and narrative dating back to

Aris-When Batman confronts his parents’ murderer, he reveals his secret identity as Bruce Wayne (but that secret is kept thanks to the plot mechanics) (from Batman #47, p. 10).

totle to describe a subject in time becoming self aware (as well as a character in relation to the reader), Eco posits that the double- play of superhero stories creates for the reader a hazy sense of the character’s past (114); this allows the reader to continue every superhero story with the same enthusiasm as similar stories that have been previously read. Moreover, Eco concludes that the superhero sets forth an “immobilizing metaphysics” for the reader in which the superhero is “never achieving total awareness” (a sense of virtue represented only in partial acts that do not move the plot forward to a point of irretrievability) (124). The implied anxiety of not moving forward is notably Aristotelian and firmly connected to the ideals of the literate world. However, within the context of oral culture, such stories do not create a sense of the past that is hazy so much as create a sense of the past that is present. And within the experience of orality, a wholly original story would not be required as the evidence of progress, an ideal that is neither desired nor even considered.

The above mentioned mastery of past information about characters isn’t the same sort one would expect from a writer devoted to the conventions of literacy, because the stories repeated rather than developed the plot (development being something privileged by the conscious awareness of the literate world). In addition to the superheroes never moving toward a particular conclusion (aside from righting the wrong committed in the most current episode), characters existed outside a strict historicity, within a frame relatively unconcerned with the “facts” of the past. Therefore, superhero comic book readers become willing to do something easily seen within oral culture but considered to be wholly unacceptable within literate culture (with written records always providing a point of reference and verification);

these readers will allow not only repetitions but also “corrections” to the story already told.

In the case of the incredibly popular Superman, who lived his life in multiple comic books and other forms of media, it was impossible from the start for DC editors to manage and restrict all story line developments. In one of the early Jerry Siegel newspaper stories of Superman, the hero tore the wings from a plane filled with the villains he pursued, and he watched them plummet to their death (Daniels, Superman 41). As editors sought to craft a hero that would be acceptable for young adults (their most significant consumer group), they made a pronouncement against Superman committing murder and the incident was willingly forgotten — because it was not repeated. In a more dramatic departure, the comic strip featured the marriage of Superman to Lois Lane in 1949 (only to later manufacture a just- a- dream explanation and rewrite the incident at the insistence of DC editors). But as it turned out, managing and restricting all story line developments was not always desirable.

Many of the essential and now indisputable characteristics of Superman’s story were not developed with the original comic book stories but were nevertheless absorbed from later versions of the comic book stories or from the versions of the stories produced in other media forms. Some of the most famous of these revisions would be introduced on the Super-man radio show, including Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, and Kryptonite, pieces of Superman’s homeworld now deadly to him (Daniels, Superman 54). To a large extent, the editors only managed stories as much as it made sense within the framework of reader opinion, and readers had a sense of what was true that operated outside of the original telling of the story. It’s also worth noting that Superman stories in recent decades have fea-tured him married to Lois Lane and killing the Doomsday monster, events in line with pre-viously forbidden story ideas. As indicated by G.S. Kirk on the subject of oral tradition, the audience always served as a sort of corrective for the singer, working to ensure that the stories remained authentic (and yet this work did not result in the verbatim repetition of the tales) (319–320).

It has now become common for scholars to identify how World War II’s super- powerful Superman departs from the vision of Superman in Siegel and Shuster’s early stories.²⁵Initially portrayed as a post–Depression era “super- reformer” (Wright 12), Superman would concoct elaborate schemes to sensitize the callous political and business sectors of society to crimes they committed under the auspices of what was legal. He reduced immoral stockbrokers to poverty so they might experience the life of those to whom they sold worthless stocks; he trapped a greedy mine owner inside a mine that the owner had secured with faulty safety measures that allowed previous cave- ins. However, during the war, Superman more clearly represented the establishment by hocking war bonds and generally supporting the efforts of the U.S. government. His adventures were less clearly grounded in the social problems of everyday America, and instead, he fought against fantasy opponents such as Bizarro (a char-acter supposedly opposite to Superman in every way but still as powerful). With an enlarging list of god- like superpowers, the resolution of Superman stories had less to do with sending a message to the powers- that- be and more to do with evoking humor from impossibly convoluted solutions. Often, this difference is ascribed to the general patriotic- toned senti-ment of a country at war that preferred, in their entertainsenti-ment media, to experience an escape from the questions of government authority rather than encounter a politically motivated social criticism. Despite what seems like a drastic change to scholars, Siegel would protest that the light- hearted and wholesome humor was there from the start: “There was a spirit of fun in the thing. As a matter of fact, Joe [Shuster] and I, when we first started going into comics, had intended to do a comedy strip. So we were very comedy oriented, and that’s why Superman did have this comic flair to it.” (qtd. in Daniels, Superman 67). In many ways, this proclamation could be understood as an indication that the changes made to Superman were not just catering to the audience; it seems as if Siegel was unable to separate himself from the crowd and the collective will that drove the content of Superman stories. Ultimately, writers of superhero comic books would make some changes to their retellings of superhero stories but would regularly do so with the idea that they brought forth what was present in the stories from the start (setting them in parallel with the epic poets of oral culture):

[A]lthough singers are aware that two different singers never sing the same song exactly alike, nevertheless a singer will protest that he can do his own version of a song line for line and word for word.... When, however, their purported verbatim renditions are recorded and compared, they turn out to be never the same, though the songs are recog-nizable versions of the same story [Ong, Orality 60].

While oral culture does not concern itself with linear, logical argument and thereby creates a sense of openness within the narrative, oral poets are genuinely concerned with remaining true to tradition (even if that tradition has been unconsciously modified by new develop-ments within the culture).

If the circumstances of production explain how superhero comic book creators think like oral poets, the specific material nature of early comic books at least adds to our under-standing of why comic book readers think like an audience listening to an oral poem. One of the foremost reasons for the popularity of comic books among young readers was that comic books were inexpensive. Like the pulps, comic books were printed on low- quality paper stock with a low- resolution printing process (separating it from the “respectable”

treatment given to reproductions of the literature and visual art part of the literate world’s high culture). In many ways, its material nature works against a sense of investment in the material object on the part of consumer. With a design more like a pamphlet or a tabloid newspaper, comic books were considered disposable because of their initial cost and the

associations that they had with the other disposable print mediums. While this does not mean that some readers did not keep their comic books for a while, those readers were as likely to share or trade their comic books as keep them for themselves.²⁶“[In 1942, P]ublish-ers assumed a generous ‘pass- along value’ of five readP]ublish-ers per comic book” (Wright 31). With these aspects of the medium in mind, comic books have another link to epic poetry in that they are considered to be practically immaterial (“sound exists only when it is going out of existence” [Ong, Orality 12]) and part of a community sharing process — thereby, like the oral word and unlike the permanence and privatization associated with conventional texts of literate culture. And since most of the comic books published between the 1930s and 1970s were thrown away (the number of disposed comic books increasing as we move back-ward in time),²⁷the stories of superheroes from those times often live more vibrantly in the readers’ memories than in the actuality of well- referenced comic book pages; this is a foreign experience in a literate world not predisposed to the memorization of stories.

In terms of the structure and development of the superhero comic book industry, it would seem that one of the most significant impediments to an oral- culture sensibility would be the idea of intellectual property in general and copyright in particular. However, the way in which major publishers enforced their claim to intellectual property led to not only another way in which oral culture was recreated but also possibly to the most significant way. McLuhan argues that the typographic press and the mass production of fixed- print manuscript lead to the mass production of literary art as commodity (The Gutenberg 124–

125): a claim generally accepted and understood by most scholars of orality and literacy.

The implications of his claim create a sense of story in the literate world that is uniformly opposed to the sense of story in the oral world. In addition to identifying a story with its

“original” author, the story itself is a fixed reference point, and, therefore, the original assumes precedence over any subsequent renditions (with subsequent renditions regarded negatively as derivative). Moreover, a story in print is not profitable in performance but profitable because the story is a series of printed pages bound in a particular sequence and known as a text; it is an object to be sold by the producer and bought by the consumer, an object with monetary value because individuals want to purchase it for the experience it promises. Since an author’s story may be reproduced as a text just as easily by others as by the author, the idea of intellectual property was developed in order to protect the profit potential of an author’s “creation” (preventing others from replicating the work in exact or even approximate form). Of course, the motivation for intellectual property is the result of a cultural development associated with literacy (money and one’s rights to it), and the claim to intellectual property is made possible by yet another cultural development also associated with literacy (a legal system based on written rules and precedent law). The most prominently known form of intellectual property is copyright, a notion that has been interpreted variously in different contexts throughout the years. In most countries, copyright extends throughout

“original” author, the story itself is a fixed reference point, and, therefore, the original assumes precedence over any subsequent renditions (with subsequent renditions regarded negatively as derivative). Moreover, a story in print is not profitable in performance but profitable because the story is a series of printed pages bound in a particular sequence and known as a text; it is an object to be sold by the producer and bought by the consumer, an object with monetary value because individuals want to purchase it for the experience it promises. Since an author’s story may be reproduced as a text just as easily by others as by the author, the idea of intellectual property was developed in order to protect the profit potential of an author’s “creation” (preventing others from replicating the work in exact or even approximate form). Of course, the motivation for intellectual property is the result of a cultural development associated with literacy (money and one’s rights to it), and the claim to intellectual property is made possible by yet another cultural development also associated with literacy (a legal system based on written rules and precedent law). The most prominently known form of intellectual property is copyright, a notion that has been interpreted variously in different contexts throughout the years. In most countries, copyright extends throughout