I just wrote a 5 page paper for existential philosophy, well six if you count the works cited page, which I do. Thought I should post it up here for all to see. (Yeah right, like anybody but 3 people read this.....)
Anyway, enjoy.
Brendan Fitzpatrick
Phil. 315
Existential Philosophy
9 December 2004
Who’s That Dark Brooding Guy in the Corner Booth?:
Defining the Existential Hero in Comic Book Literature
Comic book literature has been a part of popular culture since the early 1900s. The comic book genre has seen many ups and downs throughout its history. However, one common element that has always been a factor in their distribution and their popularity was that “comics were for kids”. This fact remained a constant for over 50 years, until the mid-eighties, when a new kind of super hero was born. He was known as the anti-hero, or the existential hero. His books were dark, bloody, and violent. While being on the side of “good”, he didn’t care what rules he had to break in order to see justice served. He was always a brooding, vengeful, loner, who appears to those around him to be out for himself. As Nietzsche would say, these heroes are, “sensitive to the horror and terror of reality”, however, they choose to do something about it, no matter what the cost.
Dark heroes such as, The Crow, and Wolverine (X-Men), are prime examples of the existential hero in comic book literature. They each can be classified under Nietzsche’s term, “The Last Man”. Each of these “heroes” is just an ordinary man, until one day he is struck by a great tragedy, thus becomes an outcast, who seeks revenge against those who have wronged him. He wishes peace and justice dispensed upon “the wicked” or those who wronged him. Each of these characters goes through some sort of tragic event that makes them want to do this.
In The Crow, created and written in 1994 by J. O’Barr, the main character is a young man in his twenties named Eric. His perfect life is shattered one night when a gang of thieves, high on drugs, rape and kill his wife on a lonely stretch of highway where the two of them were celebrating their anniversary. The gang also shot Eric, but he survived. After he recovers, he becomes a vigilante, hunting the gang members by night. He takes on the name, “The Crow”, which symbolizes his return from the dead. Eric’s motivation is purely existential. His actions and motivations can be paralleled to a quote from Keirkegard, which says, “What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know…the thing is to find a truth and idea for which I can live and die.” Eric lives through being shot, set on fire, cut with knives and swords, and being blown up until his task is completed. Once the final gang member is killed, Eric goes to the graveyard where his girlfriend is buried, and kills himself.
After he has survived the death of his fiancé, Eric decides consciously that only he can save the world from itself. Nietzsche states in his book, Beyond Good and Evil, that,
Even the body (within which individuals treat each other as equals), if it is a living and not a dying body, has to do to other bodies what the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other; it will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominate- not from any morality or immorality, but because it is living, and because it is simply will to power. (Nietzsche).
The will to power is a struggle within the self, between taking living and dying. Eric makes a conscious choice to accept his fate. He embraces it, and brings the pain he feels inside himself, into the deaths of his enemies.
When the X-Men were first introduced as characters, Marvel Comics was making a statement about tolerance by having a group of mutants who were so blatantly non-human saving the world. The mutants became the oppressed race, and regular, ordinary human beings became the villains. However, the direction of the X-Men, and its focus, was changed with the introduction of the character, Wolverine, also known as Logan.
Wolverine, unlike his counterparts who were sensitive to the public’s perception of them, was a pure anti-hero who didn’t care what anybody thought of him. He was gruff, dark, mysterious, and definitely a loner. However, some of the mystery behind his character’s origin and past was revealed in 2001, when Marvel produced a six-issue back-story entitled, Origin. The book focused on a young Logan, who through the death of his father discovers his mutant powers. The work also reveals that Logan’s real name is James Howlett. Page one of the first chapter entitled “The Hill”, opens with the following lines, “That there building is the Howlett Estate. They say it was built on a foundation of tears” (Jenkins 1). Logan, just like Eric, never wants to be a hero. He is thrust into that role through a series of unfortunate incidents and circumstances beyond his control.
Wolverine’s story is rooted in both Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Quest”, and Keirkegard’s “Rotation Method”. “The Rotation Method” tells us there are two types of individuals, each one seeking change. The “External Individual” sees a problem with the world around him, and thus seeks new surroundings in order to solve it. Origin paints Logan as this kind of individual. He constantly runs from his surroundings whenever he has problems. The other kind of individual is the “Internal Individual”, which is someone who sees a problem within himself, and seeks out change or growth. The “external” believes that nothing is his fault, that the world is screwed up, and the “internal” believes that he is the problem, that he, himself is screwed up. When Wolverine joins the X-Men, he is forced to stop running, and becomes an internal individual. He starts seeking out the questions to who he is, instead of hiding from them.
These two characters are only the tip of the iceberg as far as the existential hero in recent comic literature goes. Even the billionaire playboy turned night-stalker Batman, who is a classic super hero who dates all the way back to the golden-age of comics, gets a complete make over in the early nineties with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. An aging Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to don the cape and mask one last time as the world comes crumbling down around him under the threat of nuclear holocaust. He even ends up fighting the ultimate boy-scout super hero, Superman, who has become a government agent, who’s job it is to hunt down the last of the super heroes in the world. Similar to this story is Alan Moore’s The Watchmen, a twelve-volume work that focuses on a group of retired super heroes who are mysteriously being killed off one by one. The main character, Rorschach, is the only one who hasn’t let government sanctions against super-heroes put him into retirement. When his friends begin to be murdered around him, he goes into action to find out who is behind it.
As society has become more violent and blood thirsty for answers to all of life’s questions, the comic book industry has kept pace. With themes such as mass murder, nuclear war, and suicide, the pure hero who is out for “truth, justice, and the American way”, has taken a back seat to the dark, brooding anti-heroes that are offered up at the local comic book store. They seem to have a deeper connection with humans, how we live, and how we feel. They don’t have all the answers, but they ask a lot of the same questions we are asking ourselves, and sometimes it is just good to know that you are not alone.
Works Cited
Jenkins, Paul, et al. Origin. New York: Marvel Enterprises Inc, 2001
Kaufman, Walter, ed. The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin Books, 1976
Luper, Stephen. Existing: An Introduction to Existential Thought.
Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000.
Moore, Alan. The Watchmen. New York: DC Comics Inc, 1987.
O’Barr, James. The Crow. Northampton: Kitchen Sink Press, 1994.0
Trushell, John M. “America Dreams of Mutants: The X-Men- Pulp Fiction, Science
Fiction, and Superheroes.” The Journal of Popular Culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Company, 2004.
