Five Quarts_ A Personal and Natural History of Blood - Bill Hayes [35]
Steve then commented on the fan’s use of the word real to describe a comic with a woman who can turn invisible, her brother who can burst into controlled flame, her husband whose body becomes Silly Putty, and her friend who’s essentially an animate pile of rocks. I still wasn’t sure, though, whether Steve was poking fun at the letter writer or being serious.
“Cool, isn’t it?” he said. Okay, there was my answer.
“Yeah.” It is cool. I find the wholehearted suspension of disbelief that avid comics fans share to be marvelous. Although I prefer the sure footing of nonfiction, I still envy that fearless willingness to lunge into pure imagination. My beloved collections of Joan Didion essays are never so transporting. The degree to which a comic-book reader is drawn into the illusion depends upon the adherence to a set of conventions dating back to the late 1930s, the earliest days of this indigenous American art form. The heroes must have fabulous powers or abilities. They have bright costumes and dual identities. The conflict between good and evil is clearly delineated. And the convention that wraps all these elements into one neat package is the origin story, the tale of a character’s pivotal moment of transformation. Whereas ancient myths always have a definite resolution—odyssey’s end, deification, betrothal, and so forth—superhero comics are usually meant to be never-ending sagas. Regardless of the adventures yet to come, though, the character is always anchored by his or her origin. Superman—no matter what a current creative team does with him—will always be a survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, raised by the Kents in Smallville, Kansas.
In the life of a comic book, the origin story may be retold dozens of times. Usually it’s done in a flashback, deftly recapped in a handful of panels, often to jump-start a new storyline. Marvel Comics, mindful that each issue might be a reader’s first, used to summarize the title character’s origin in a box on the splash page. I love these old thumbnail bios. Allow me to introduce, for instance, the original Spider-Woman:
When Jessica Drew’s father injected her with a serum of spider blood, he cured her of a fatal disease . . . and changed her life completely! Watch her, now, as she confronts her responsibilities, problems and unbelievable POWERS!
The idea that heroes often have supercharged blood reflects the real-world belief that qualities course through our blood. There being no scientific evidence for this does not dispel the notion. When the anchor of the nightly news praises firefighters for the “bravery pumping through their veins,” we don’t disagree. Heroes, whether actual or fictional, seem to have a blood type the rest of us don’t. This conception is amplified manyfold in comic books. Captain America, for instance, has Super-Soldier Blood; his courage isn’t the courage of one man but that of an entire battalion. Such is the potency of superhero blood that a transfusion from the original Human Torch (who, by the way, wasn’t even human) helped transform the character named Spitfire into a superspeedstress. Then there’s the She-Hulk, formerly a petite attorney. Near death after a catastrophic car accident, she was saved by her cousin, Bruce (aka the Hulk), who gave her an emergency blood transfusion, unintentionally turning her into a female version of himself, the Savage She-Hulk.
Creative teams do sometimes bend the rules. Some superheroes wear street clothes rather than costumes, for instance. Likewise, some have powers that do not originate in their blood but come from an external source, such as a talisman or exoskeleton. And there are others who don’t even have origin stories. Or, to be more precise, whose origins are shrouded in mystery. Of these, the superstrong Savage Dragon comes to mind. Dragon has a healing factor that enables him to recuperate from any injury, yet he doesn’t know how he acquired it. His earliest memory is of awakening in a burning field, naked, a full-grown man, bright green, with a large fin on his head. Despite this blank slate,