HERCULES AND SUPERMAN: THE MODERN-DAY MYTHOLOGY OF THE COMIC BOOK: Some Clinical Applications

Abstract

A little boy writes to a magazine, Dear Editor: I love your stories wherein Jimmy goes into the past and meets a hero who is sort of a replica of Superman, such as Samson, H ercules, Atl as, etc. What will you do when you run out of heroes? (Superman 's Pal-Jimmy Ol sen, 1964). The heroes of the early comics were, in fact , not only replicas of mythological heroes from the past, but in some cases have actually seemed to prophesy the future. For example, almost three decades ago the infant Kal-EI, surely the world 's youngest astronaut, fired the retro-rockets on man's first spaceship, plunged into Earth's atmo sphere, and crashed like a meteor onto the farm of Eben and Sarah Kent and into the lives of untold millions of American youngsters. Separated prematurely from his parents, expelled in cataclysmic fashion from his native planet, Krypton, he discovers himself now a