Superman is dead

Some quick thoughts spurred by John Holbo's Superbeing and Time. Holbo is reacting to Charles McGrath's NYT article, Not Funnies. I think John is right about the superhero trope in modern novels, graphic or conventional.
Holbo writes:

The thing about superhero stories is that they make no sense whatsoever, not even a little tiny bit, and never will; but once - when you were small - this made so much sense that nothing else seemed to.

Here's where I disagree. Superhero stories are like religion. They make some sense, just not perfect sense. The problem is that they start from premises too fantastic to be contained in any fictional universe. Inevitably local coherence breaks down. That's what makes it so much fun to bait superhero fundamentalists. "Enlightened," "grown up" comic book fans are exasperating because they refuse to engage in the most entertaining part of superhero discourse--apologetics. The fundamentalists will rise to the bait every time, coming up with heroic explanations to wrest internal coherence from the jaws of contradiction.

Maybe the old time superhero comic has gone the way of the old time pilgrimage yarn.

Comments

[jholbo]

Dear Majikthise,

Pleased to meet you, and thank you for your post. Your point about the joys of baiting fundamentalists is well taken. (I'm actually working on another post about the scholastic intricacies of continuity policing and such.) All of which brings me to my point: I have quite accidentally erased your track-back in the course of clearing out some surplus track-backs from Henry Farrell. Please feel free to re-post, thereby correcting the situation, as I cannot. (I really didn't want you to feel I had for some reason banned you.)

[Levi]

As the former owner of a used and rare book store with a comic book section, I can tell you that grown up comic book fans are more than willing to engage in apologetics. And when they start, they don't soon stop. And I like comicsand comics fans. But you are hitting a sore spot here.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Thanks, John. It's fixed now.