| Friday, May 6, 2005 |
14:51 - In defense of unoriginality
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The prevailing chic in the comic-book and animation world for the past couple of decades has been an ironic, satiric take on the world of superheroes. It (arguably) started with The Watchmen in 1986 or thereabouts, and in recent years it's reached full flower in Tartakovsky's Justice Friends and all the Space Ghost-derived incarnations that make up the Adult Swim panoply. Pixar took it mainstream with The Incredibles.
But I couldn't help noticing something. A certain plot device just keeps cropping up in these kinds of anti-superhero stories, over and over again; it seems that whenever a writer wants to come up with a plausible or realistic plot to justify a superhero universe, he universally reaches for this device. It's the "Evil supervillain—a disillusioned former hero—wants to engineer a catastrophe so he can pose as the savior that renews respect for heroes fallen from public acclaim" thing.
The Watchmen did it (Ozymandias). The Incredibles, penned as it was by the great Brad Bird, did it (Syndrome). And as I was reading Kurt Busiek's Astro City story "The Tarnished Angel" featuring Steeljack, I found myself looking for the introspective former hero living alone in a dark mansion who'd inevitably turn out to be plotting a manufactured disaster for himself to thwart. "Him? no... Him? No... wait—Him!" And lo and behold, El Hombre was exactly that.
Something about the nature of these post-modern superhero stories just lends itself to this cynical, hopeless, amoral plot twist. In the application of the subterfuge you always see in the real world to a universe where one expects to see moral certainty and incorruptibility in the heroes, this device is sort of a slam-dunk. Yet it keeps being used, over and over.
I guess it goes to show that if the execution is good enough, fans won't notice, or care. The Incredibles was just way too good for any significant outcry to have arisen over the fact that its primary plot point, seemingly groundbreaking and bold, had already been turned hackneyed by earlier ventures into this already middle-aged subgenre. Bird's script centers on a textbook play... but we forgive it, because the overall story and its presentation are just too damn good. And while earlier outings that used it were underground and obscure, this one's a PIxar film that's on every home video bookshelf by now.
I just hope that's the end of it, and nobody tries to do this again. Because now people will notice.
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Brian Tiemann
