Comics in Context #62: That's Incredible!
Peter goes in-depth on <I>The Incredibles</I>
By Peter Sanderson
Updated:
I wondered: could it be that Pixar had found the Holy Grail that Marvel and DC and the comics industry have (half-heartedly and ineffectively) been seeking for years: creating superheroes that would bring in a new audience of little kids?
LEFT TURN, RIGHT TURN
Before its releaseThe Incredibles was also attracting serious attention from adults. An article by John M. Broder inThe New York Times on October 20, 2004, "Truth, Justice and the Middle-American Way," asserted that "The buzz out of early screenings is thatThe Incredibles. . . carries a considerably more middle-American sensibility than the usual fare from Hollywood, where liberal shibboleths often become the stuff of mainstream movies." Moreover, "in some respects," the film's themes are "likely to resonate more in conservative-leaning 'red' states than in left-leaning 'blue' ones."
Why? What provoked this reaction was one of the premises of the movie: that its lead character, Mr. incredible, and his fellow superheroes had been forced to give up their heroic careers as the result of a deluge of lawsuits from ungrateful citizens. (Mr. Incredible is initially sued by a man he prevented from committing suicide, who claimed he had a right to kill himself!) Broder writes, "Evil trial lawyers are the least of their problems, and Mr. Bird demurs when asked if the unflattering portrayal of them is a conscious tweaking of a lobby that provides large sums to the Democratic party. 'I just always wondered when a superhero broke through that wall, who was going to pay for that wall?' he said with a smile."
But there's more. Mr. Incredible, his wife Elastigirl, and the other costumed crusaders enter the government's "Superhero Relocation Program" (as if they were witnesses hiding out from retaliation by organized crime). Broder writes that "the Incredibles are mired in a boring suburban life until they dare again to be great in the face of a society suspicious of the outsized and protective of underachievers." This movie does not leave its lead hero mired in suburban hell for long: first Mr. Incredible is drawn back into the life of a superhero, and then his wife and even his children follow.
The implication is that it is liberals who are "protective of underachievers," and that therefore the movie is criticizing the liberal mindset. In his review,Times critic A. O. Scott invokes both Nietzche, creator of the "ubermensch" concept, and Ayn Rand, advocate of what she sees as the great man's right to rise above the mediocrity of the masses.
Well, Steve Ditko, co-creator of Spider-Man, is known to be an admirer of Rand's philosophy, whose influence can be detected in the early years ofSpider-Man, although I think that Stan Lee's liberal sensibility remains dominant. (The Question andMr. A. notoriously represent Ditko's undiluted political philosophy.) In earlier columns I've dealt with how the American superhero represents the revision of Nietzche's potentially fascistic "ubermensch" concept to suit the egalitarian ideology of American democratic society. In brief, the American superhero is not our superior, but One of Us, who happens to have special talents that he uses to serve the community.
I suspect that the political satire ofTeam America: World Police, the recent puppet movie fromSouth Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, as well as the growing awareness in this election year of a cultural split between the "red" and "blue" states, had primed people to notice apparent political content even in the latest Pixar "family" movie.
Actually, it's a pleasure to see that the cultural mainstream is increasingly receptive to the idea that animated movies and the superhero genre can deal with serious themes, including politics. As readers of this column will remember, only last year theTimes' A. O. Scott was bemoaning superhero movies that dared attempt to rise above what he considered their proper status as mindless entertainments. He claimed that watching such movies with their thematic ambitions made him feel as if he were trapped back in what he considered the stifling tedium of graduate school. (How odd to find theTimes chief cinema critic, an intellectual himself, engaging in anti-intellectualism.) Yet here he is praisingThe Incredibles for being "ethically serious" and observing it has "an edge of intellectual indignation unusual in a family-friendly cartoon blockbuster."
A GIANT ACHIEVEMENT
But isThe Incredibles really a right wing film? This seems unlikely if one looks at Brad Bird's previous animated feature film,The Iron Giant (1999), his visually handsome, imaginative and touching fable of a young boy's friendship with a colossal robot from outer space (which has just been released on DVD). Initially irresponsible, the young protagonist, Hogarth, achieves maturity by mentoring the childlike robot. Consider this film's distrust of government authority, personified by a creepy F. B. I. agent snooping into the boy hero Hogarth's life; since the film is set in the 1950s, there may even be a critique of McCarthyism here. Certainly the film is opposed to Cold War militarism, represented not only by the army that attacks the robotic Iron Giant, but even the Giant's original programming to be a mindless war machine. The movie shows sympathy for outsiders and nonconformists, including Hogarth, a 1950s hipster artist who becomes his friend, and the alien robot itself. Indeed, the movie demonstrates a willingness to recognize an individual, the Giant, who is unlike the majority of the population as "human" rather than a menace to be driven out or destroyed.
All of this, it seems to me, actually reflects a liberal sensibility. That suggests that close examination would show Bird'sIncredibles likewise to be more liberal than conservative in outlook.
The Iron Giant has ties to the superhero genre itself. Hogarth shows the Giant his comics collection, including issues ofSuperman and Will Eisner'sThe Spirit. (Sitting in the theater in 1999, I reflected that 99.9% of the movie's audience would never have heard ofThe Spirit, and admired Bird for including this homage nonetheless.) Hogarth encourages the Giant to take Superman as his role model. The Iron Giant becomes a superhero himself, gaining humanity through his relationship with the boy, sacrificing himself to save a community (his last word beingSuperman), and even finally undergoing a Campbellian death and resurrection. (The boy guiding this enormous, childlike super-powered being reminds me of the version of Bruce Banner and the Hulk in Alex Ross and Jim Krueger'sEarth X.)
COMICS AND CONFORMITY
A. O. Scott realizes in hisIncredibles review that the movie indicates "a thorough, feverish immersion in. . .the history of American comic books." Brad Bird clearly not only has considerable knowledge of the superhero genre, but he also understands a great deal about what makes the genre work. I findThe Incredibles remarkable in its imaginative and insightful reworkings of superheroic archetypes and themes, even adapting concepts from revisionist, "adult" superhero works of the last quarter century into a film designed as a family entertainment.
InThe Incredibles Brad Bird is following the example set by Stan Lee with the Marvel Comics of the "Silver Age" of the 1960s, portraying costumed heroes with realistic personalities, and asking what would superheroes' lives be like if they existed in the real world. One of the aspects ofThe Incredibles that most impresses me is one of its least showy features: the fully believable interactions among Mr. Incredible and his wife Elastigirl in their everyday identities of Bob and Helen Parr. The early scenes between them in a domestic setting establish them as an suburban married couple with nuanced, entirely credible three-dimensional personalities. Bird achieves the traditional Marvel goal of depicting rounded characters who just happen to have super-powers.
Bird's idea of having people sue superheroes likewise fits the traditional Stan Lee mode: it's something that would indeed happen in the real world and Bird treats it with the same satiric humor that Lee himself would. (I even seem to recall an early Lee-DitkoSpider-Man scene in which crooks threaten to sue Spidey for roughing them up!)
Stan Lee's Marvel revolution also introduced the concept of the superhero as the misunderstood, even persecuted outsider. It's now widely understood that the primary theme ofThe X-Men is racism. The mutants inX-Men and, indeed, the super-powered heroes of any Marvel series can serve as metaphors for any individual or minority group that feels different from the majority.
I notice that at one point inThe Incredibles we are shown a photo of a man who is described as an advocate of "superhero rights." This suggests that Bird also regards the "supers" (as the film calls super-powered individuals) as a metaphorical minority group.
I also notice that Bird gives no origins for Mr. Incredible and the other heroes. In fact, the implication is that Mr. Incredible's children naturally developed super-powers because their parents had super-powers (albeit different ones). In other words, the kids are mutants, though that word is never used. For all we know, all of the superheroes inThe Incredibles are mutants. That literally makes them a racial minority group.
Just as in Marvel stories the public so often turns against Spider-Man and the X-Men, out of suspicion, resentment, or even racial prejudice, so too the public inThe Incredibles turns against its heroes, forcing them into early retirement.
Actually, the superheroes inThe Incredibles are forced into conforming with the majority life style. In her review ofThe Incredibles inThe Village Voice (Nov. 3-9, 2004), critic Jessica Winter perceived thatThe Incredibles has "the overarching theme of theX-Men films: a troubled assimilation into a suspicious society that's decidedly below-Parr" (a clever reference to Mr. Incredible's "civilian" name, Bob Parr).
Others have pointed out that Superman is a metaphor for the immigrant who assimilates into society: Superman is a refugee from the "old world," Krypton, who is raised in the American heartland and taught its moral values. (So I guess Superman is a "red state" guy.) He takes a Waspish name, Clark Kent, and in that persona blends into conventional society, concealing his true "ethnicity" as a super-powered Kryptonian.
This reflects the real life situations of many of the early creative figures in superhero comics, who were themselves the children of Jewish immigrants, and who in various cases changed their names to mask their ethnicity in a Christian-dominated world. (Hence, for example, Jacob Kurtzberg became Jack Kirby.)
Clark Kent is the conformist man, who wears not a colorful, individualized costume but the corporate uniform of suit and tie; who labors in a conventional job as only one of many employees for a modern company; who doesn't draw attention to himself; and who is "mild-mannered," never displaying strong emotions or ambitions; remaining in the "place" assigned him by society. He has to hide the fact that he is Superman. Even if Clark didn't have super-powers, consider this: he is a writer, a creative artist, who has to get along in a corporate environment and a conformist society.
In recent years the X-Men and other super heroes have been "outed" from their secret identities. But traditionally in the superhero genre, this theme of assimilation into conventional society applies to virtually all the heroes, not just those who were literally born outside America. Consider how in years past the X-Men would venture into Manhattan in "civilian" clothes, effectively posing as "normal" humans in order to mingle with the majority.
Super-powers become symbols of whatever makes an individual different, whether it his or her racial or ethnic background, gender, sexuality, talents, lifestyle, or anything else. Superman's disguise as Clark Kent becomes a symbol of society's blindness to people's true talents: they can't even see past those glasses to recognize he's Superman!
Clark Kent could also be regarded as a symptom of societal pressure for those who are different to conform. There's even pressure not to be smarter than other people, lest one be demonized as a "nerd" or a "geek," terms even the good grayTimes commonly uses nowadays; this kind of anti-intellectualism is everywhere from high school to Presidential campaigns, even inducing people like the aforementioned Mr. Scott to take on the protective coloration of disparaging academia.
So this is the fate that befalls Mr. Incredible and his fellow superheroes early in their movie: they are forced into conformity with the rest of society. Each is forced to suppress an entire side of his identity; they no longer have any outlet for their true talents. Unable to follow his true vocation, for which he has such passion, Bob Parr, the former Mr. Incredible is confined to a mundane day job, what Scott calls "the 9-to-5 tedium of Bob's day processing insurance claims."
If we regard the superheroes ofThe Incredibles as a suppressed minority group, then the movie seems to me to demonstrate a liberal sensibility in its sympathy for their plight, not a conservative one. In the Nov. 4, 2004Times, columnist Bob Herbert criticized a campaign that "said, essentially. . .Be frightened. . .of those in this pluralistic society who may have thoughts and beliefs and values that differ from your own."
The Incredibles instead argues against forcing those who are "different" into hiding their true nature from the rest of society, converting cultural pluralism into uniformity.
One could also regardThe Incredibles as advocating the recognition of artists and freeing them to utilize their creative talents. It could even be seen as an attack on ageism, with its middle-aged superheroes forced out of their careers while they still have so much to contribute.
As Scott says in his review, "Until the last act. . .The Incredibles may resonate more strongly with adults than with children, as it is, at its heart, a story of mid-life frustration and compromise, examining the toll that unfulfilling work can exact on a marriage, and the heady rebirth (accompanied by a bit of marital confusion) that professional satisfaction can bring."
I like Scott's reference to "professional satisfaction" idea. InThe Incredibles the superhero becomes, in part, a metaphor for the creative person exercising his talents. Super-powers become a metaphor for creativity, individuality, and spiritual potential.
Contemplating the Incredibles and their superhero colleagues forced into retirement, I can turn it into a metaphor for the situation of many middle-aged comics pros unemployed or underemployed in today's corporate comics industry, shut out from exercising their own talents. If only more of them could figuratively get back into costume just as the Incredibles get to do!
THE INCREDIBLES MEET THE FANTASTICS
In creating his own family of superheroes, Brad Bird is drawing on a familiar archetype from the superhero genre. One can regard a closely bonded team like the X-Men as a symbolic "family," but Bird is quite literally portraying a family of heroes inThe Incredibles.
The concept of a family having adventures together underliesSwiss Family Robinson, which appears to be the inspiration for its science fiction counterpart, television'sLost in Space, also about a family named Robinson. In recent years there has been filmmaker Robert Rodriguez'sSpy Kids trilogy, whose heroes' super-scientific gadgetry pushes their adventures towards superhero territory.
The clear inspiration for the Incredibles family, though, is Marvel's Fantastic Four. As you will see in my forthcoming "round table" of interviews with past F. F. writers and artists for TwoMorrows'Back Issue magazine, it's now commonly accepted that the Fantastic Four constitutes a family.
Originally, this was only symbolically true. The team consisted of leader Reed Richards, his best friend Ben Grimm, Reed's girlfriend Sue Storm, and her younger brother Johnny Storm; only the latter two were actually related. Reed, the authority figure, was already middle-aged. (Reed, like Ben, was originally portrayed in the 1960s as a World War II veteran.) He, then, was the group's "father." (Young readers surely looked up to him as an idealized father figure, as well.) unconsciously Sue, who married him in the mid-1960s, was the "mother," a role that was confirmed when she gave birth to Franklin towards the decade's end. Johnny, originally portrayed as a teenager, was literally Sue's brother and Reed's brother-in-law, but he was the "kid" in the team. Ben's role is the most complex. As Reed's best friend since they were college roommates, he is symbolically Reed's brother, and can interact with Reed as an equal and confidant. On the other hand, Ben can throw childish temper tantrums or joke around in serious situations. Reed, and sometimes Sue, therefore have to keep Ben in line as if he were their child. And F. F. readers are familiar with Ben and Johnny's mock battles, as if they were acting out sibling rivalry. So Ben is one of the family's "kids," too.
Actually, not everyone at 21st century Marvel "gets" the family dynamic of the Fantastic Four, as obvious as it now seems. In the alternate version of the F. F. introduced inUltimate Fantastic Four, written by Brian Michael Bendis, Reed is presented as a rather nerdishly studious youth, no older than Sue or Ben. It's been pointed out that Stan Lee's 1960s Marvel heroes tended to be scholars: brilliant scientists (Reed Richards, Peter Parker, Henry Pym, Bruce Banner, Charles Xavier), inventors (Tony Stark), doctors (Don Blake, Stephen Strange), and a lawyer (Matt Murdock). This may reflect the ambition of the generation that grew up in the Great Depression to better their lot through education (this is a central theme in Daredevil's origin) and the new emphasis on science in the "Space Age" of the early 1960s (reflected by the space flight in Lee and Kirby's F. F.'s origin).Ultimate Fantastic Four, though, reflects the anti-intellectualism of today's popular culture, in which, as noted above, to be smart is to be a geek. (Lee and Kirby had Ben kid Reed for being stuffy, but Ben, Lee, and Kirby clearly genuinely respected his intellect..) Worse,Ultimate Fantastic Four deprives Reed of his symbolic status as the group's "father."
(It's rumored thatUltimate Fantastic Four mirrors the depiction of the team in next year'sFantastic Four movie. It's dispiriting when Marvel itself doesn't "get" what makes its own characters work. Will it turn out thatThe Incredibles does the theme of the superhero family better than theFantastic Four movie will?)
The Incredibles are not symbolically, but literally a family. Hence they are a purer incarnation of the adventurer family archetype than even the Fantastic Four. (Yet another contemporary variation on this archetype, even more clearly inspired by the Fantastic Four, is the First Family in Kurt Busiek'sAstro City series.)
Mr. Incredible's name is clearly a variation on Mr. Fantastic's. (Whether Stan Lee was aware of the Golden Age hero Mr. Terrific is unknown.) Some of you may remember when Marvel writer Tom DeFalco came up with his own variant on the name "Mr. Fantastic" for his "New Universe" superhero teamKickers, Inc.: he dubbed its leader "Mr. Magnificent," a name that just looks silly and pretentious. Somehow, though, "Mr. Incredible" works, at least in this movie's semi-comedic context.
So the Incredibles take their name from husband/father Mr. Incredible. Consider this: what if Stan Lee had decided to name Mr. Fantastic's team "The Fantastics," thereby causing decades of confusion with the long-running musical "The Fantasticks"?
Mr. Incredible, a. k. a. Bob Parr, is literally the team's husband and father. He takes the lead role in combat, but he's not really the leader. The F. F. was created in the pre-feminist 1960s.The Incredibles, however, makes clear that Mr. Incredible and Elastigirl had separate superhero careers before their marriage, and, once she returns to action in the movie, they interact as equals.
Mr, Incredible doesn't have Mr. Fantastic's super-powers, nor his scientific genius. Instead he's got super-strength, which is, after all, the primary power we associate with super heroes. I suspect that Bird wants us to think of Mr. Incredible as, in part, a counterpart of Superman, the archetypal superhero. Still, it's notable that Bird doesn't give Mr. Incredible Superman's other two most well-known powers: flight and invulnerability. In fact, Mr. Incredible really has the same super-power as the Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm, but without Ben's monstrous appearance as the Thing.
Likewise, Bob/Mr. Incredible has a "regular guy" persona, rather than being an intellectual visionary like Reed Richards. Significantly, Mr. Incredible is voiced by actor Craig T. Nelson, best known for playing the title role in the television seriesCoach. Ben Grimm grew up on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side during the Great Depression (in the 1960s version of continuity), and Bob Parr could be regarded as a more middle-class version of the same kind of character.
Among Brad Bird's credits is his work on the early seasons ofThe Simpsons, and one might observe that both the Simpsons and the Incredibles are middle-class nuclear families of five: husband- breadwinner, housewife, trickster son, more introverted daughter, and baby. So maybe Bob Parr also has something in common with Homer Simpson, without the dopiness but (until he drops the weight) with the paunch.
Mr. Fantastic's powers have instead been transposed to Mr. Incredible's wife, Elastigirl. The early sequence in which Elastigirl flirtatiously tells Mr. Incredible he should be "more flexible" might even be meant to point to a bit of Reed's stuffiness in Bob's own character. Certainly inFantastic Four Sue is more easily in touch with her emotions than the cerebral Reed is. Reed's romance with Sue is meant to loosen him up emotionally: if not for her, he's probably spend full time in the lab.
Of course, just as the Thing was not the first superhero with super-strength, Mr. Fantastic was not the first hero with a stretchable body: Plastic Man holds that honor.
But is it a coincidence that Bob's wife Helen, alias Elastigirl, has the same superhero name (minus the hyphen) as Elasti-Girl, a. k. a. Rita Farr, the female member of DC Comics' originalDoom Patrol of the 1960s? Listen closely: can you hear the gnashing of teeth from DC lawyers who apparently let the company's trademark on the name lapse? It's especially ironic since DC has not only recently republished the earlyDoom Patrol stories in its Archives series, but John Byrne has finally brought Rita back through his new reboot of the series.
Originally, Rita's powers resembled those of Marvel's Henry Pym rather than Plastic Man: she could grow to giant size or shrink to Lilliputian stature. It was the Doom Patrol's enemy Madame Rouge who could stretch individual parts of her body, but Rita learned how to do this as well.
If Brad Bird is indeed aware of the 1960s Doom Patrol, it makes sense that it too would be an influence onThe Incredibles. The Doom Patrol has often been cited for its remarkable and coincidental similarities with Marvel's X-Men, which was created at roughly the same time. The similarities between the Doom Patrol and the F. F., however, have been overlooked a team of four adventurers, led by a scientific genius (Reed, the Chief), with a macho, hot-tempered "regular guy" trapped in an inhuman form (Ben, Robotman), a beautiful woman (Sue, Rita), and a young man who can fly in a strange energy form (the Human Torch, Negative Man). In his newDoom Patrol series John Byrne depicts the Chief as a rather stern, authoritarian figure, and the other three are basically his employees. Some months ago, though, FilmForce kindly sent me a copy of DC'sDoom Patrol Archives Vol. 2, which confirms my memory thatDoom Patrol co-creator Arnold Drake portrayed the team as a surrogate family, with the Chief as warm and fatherly, and his three super-powered agents as if they were his adult children.
The real giveaway of the F. F.'s influence onThe Incredibles is daughter Violet, who has not one but both of Sue's powers: invisibility and the ability to create protective force fields. In depicting Violet's use of her powers, Bird demonstrates his insight into the subtexts of the Silver AgeFantastic Four. Lee and Kirby createdThe Fantastic Four in 1961 and did not then foresee that within a few years the feminist action heroine would begin to emerge in popular culture. (For example, Peter O'Donnell's pioneering action heroine, Modesty Blaise, began appearing in British comic strips in 1963; this year Titan Books has started publishing an excellent series of collections of her early adventures.) In the early years ofFantastic Four, Sue was less active in combat than the "boys." Lee and Kirby gave her super-powers that she mostly employed defensively: basically they enabled her to hide from danger. As for Violet, in his review ofThe Incredibles critic A. O. Scott perceptively says, "these powers serve mainly as metaphors for her shyness and disconnection." Violet's personality in the first two thirds of the movie is based on hiding. In the classic Marvel manner, she feels that her super-powers make her different from "normal "people and that therefore she is an outsider in their midst. Perhaps this is what makes her so painfully shy, as we see in the early scene of her inability to reach out to a male classmate she's attracted to. Violet even hides behind her long hair, which falls over her face not in the sultry style of Veronica Lake but as a sort of mask. Her long black hair and black wardrobe make her look something like a Goth girl, but not like the (usually) cheery and charming Death fromSandman or the sardonically witty Raven from Cartoon Network's animatedTeen Titans. Violet is instead an introverted misfit.
Helen/Elastigirl's powers, on the other hand, lend themselves to more active, aggressive uses, and hence are more appropriate for a contemporary superheroine. On Syndrome's island in the latter part of the movie, Helen tells Violet she has "more power" than she thinks. It's a speech about female empowerment, and sets the stage for Violet's active participation in the battle to come. The combat with the villain Syndrome and his forces becomes a trial of fire for Violet: in overcoming her own fears and openly using her powers, she matures into a more well-rounded personality. (By the movie's end she has finally made the connection with the good-looking classmate.) Would that someone had given Sue a similar speech circa 1963. (But she eventually got there on her own, and now regularly thwacks villains with force fields rather than simply cowering within them.)
Now we come to Dashiell, nicknamed "Dash," the Incredibles' young son and, if my hypothesis holds, the counterpart to the Human Torch. But Dash doesn't have the same power as any of the F. F., although I suppose one could say that he and Johnny both move fast and have a taste for practical jokes. (Dash carries a makeshift torch in one scene. Does that count?)
But "Dash" rhymes with "Flash," and this kid is a super-speedster, like DC Comics' Flash and numerous other characters in superhero history. In the battle scenes on Syndrome's island, Dash discovers he can even run across water; this is a stunt familiar from plenty of Silver AgeFlash stories. As a prankster kid superspeedster, Dash is like DC's Impulse or the wiseacre version of the Flash in Cartoon Network's animatedJustice League series.
As for Bob and Helen's baby, it reminds me of Reed and Sue's son Franklin, born in Lee and Kirby'sFantastic Four Annual #6 (1968). (Recently Reed and Sue also have had a daughter, Valeria.) Franklin proved to have super-powers, and (spoiler warning: skip to the next paragraph) so does the Incredibles' infant, who towards the movie's end demonstrates shapeshifting abilities and seemingly bursts into flame without harm to itself. (So is that a reference to the Human Torch?)
Bob's friend Lucius Best, the superhero Frozone, is not a member of the core family group, but nonetheless fills Ben Grimm's role as the lead hero's best friend, contemporary and confidant. Plenty of characters in the superhero genre share Frozone's freezing powers, including Batman's foe Mr. Freeze and the Silver Age Flash's nemesis Captain Cold. But the ice slides that Frozone creates for himself make me think particularly of the X-Men's Iceman.
Syndrome, the villain, could be regarded as a wannabe member of the family: years ago he wanted to be Mr. Incredible's kid sidekick, a role that can be interpreted as that of a symbolic son. This makes Syndrome's attempts to kill Mr. Incredible metaphorically patricidal.
The Fantastic Four's primary nemesis, Doctor Doom, can likewise be seen as an outcast from the F. F. "family." In their origin for Doom, Lee and Kirby showed how the young Doom was originally assigned to be Reed Richards' college roommate, and could have become his friend. Instead Doom angrily rejected Reed, and Ben Grimm not only replaced Doom as Reed's roommate but became his best friend. So Doom is the F. F. member who could have been, but instead turned into the bitter enemy of Reed and the "family" he built around himself. Note, too, that in versions of Superman's continuity, including TV'sSmallville, the young Lex Luthor is the best friend and figurative "brother" of Clark Kent/Superboy, and is hence another former "family" member turned black sheep.
The Incredibles emphasizes that Syndrome has no innate super-powers as the title characters do; he instead resorts to super-scientific technology to compete against him. That made me think about how often a superhero's leading nemesis--Doctor Doom, Luthor, Dr. Sivana, "mad scientists" all--has no super-powers of his own. Maybe this suggests that the villains are figuratively impotent, lacking in innate physical prowess and vitality, and hence resentful of the heroes for possessing exactly those qualities.
It's not just the comics of the Silver Age that apparently inspiredThe Incredibles, though, but the growing literature about superheroes in midlife, by Miller, Moore, and others, as we shall see in Part 2 of thisIncredibles essay next week.
You can check out the rest of our Comics in Context featureshere.
Copyright 2004 Peter Sanderson
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