The Well‐Born Superhero

Abstract

The dual-identity hero-millionaire playboy by day, crime-fighting do-gooder by night-is one of most enduring staples of American comic books, most famously embodied by Bob Kane and Bill Finger's 1939 Batman. The hybrid figure, however, originates decades earlier and encompasses a multi-generic, transatlantic array of texts unified by central trope of controlled, individual transformation employed for social good. Early literature of dual-identity hero spans not only comic books but plays, silent film, radio, popular novels, and pulp fiction magazines, in an expanse of genres that, in addition to superhero narratives, includes adventure, western, crime, science fiction, and romance. While these characters have no single point of origin and influence, superhero's duality evolved within cultures that exhibited a larger preoccupation with superhuman transformation.The contemporary superhero character type is in part a product of British and American eugenics movements of early twentieth century. [RJegardless of literary form in which it is presented, write Lois A. Cuddy and Claire M. Roche in Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940, the Darwinian way of seeing world and human life had taken root, and science empowered upper-class, educated, white men to enjoy only thing'they could believe with absolute certainty: their own preeminence in a world of constant (47). While Bruce Wayne continues to embody that pre-eminently upper-class white man championing status quo, generative context of Evolution, devoid of protective hand of Providence, presented two assaults to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century social structure: degenerates from below, and degeneration from within. The Superman was solution to both. Although name is associated with comic book creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman was central term of eugenics introduced by George Bernard Shaw in 1903 (with only a tangential reference to Nietzsche). The hybrid figure of dual-identity hero emerged at this cultural moment when many eugenicists were popularizing Mendel's principles of hybridization. Beginning with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, supermen of aristocratic birth rescue ruling class by metaphorically blending their identities with objects of their fear. Refiguring gothic tragedies of interbreeding into narratives of triumph, dual-identity hero-part well-born, part criminal commoner-absorbs threat of unfit, while simultaneously improving well born by purging upper class of its degenerative parasitism. By transforming idle rich into noble adventurers, eugenic hero narratives safeguard their class' inheritance as rightful rulers. Where selective breeding promised eventual biological transformation of ruling class into a ruling race of supermen, fantastical supermen of genre literatures popular before comic books delivered eugenic future in a single bound.As first and most influential dual-identity Superman, Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel established hybridity as a paradoxically reactionary trait for well-born hybrids to follow in emergent genre. As eugenics widened its cultural hold, hero hybridization expanded, particularly into pulp fiction, manifesting a range of iconic characters that include Tarzan, Gray Seal, and Zorro. When eugenics declined in late 1920s, hero formula mirrored that change too. As Superman found its ultimate expression in Nazism, a race of artificially evolved superhumans shifted from societal goal to societal threat. While still maintaining cultural fascination with figure of Superman, 1930s pulp fiction subverted marriage plot to isolate superhuman heroes and thwart narratives of reproduction. In their final, comic book incarnations, supermen abandoned eugenics to defend egalitarian principles movement opposed. …