So I have been watching this thing about superheroes. It’s a three part documentary series about superheroes, comics, and their role in American cultural history.

I have learned many neato things from it. For example, comics did massive business during World War II. It was estimated that pretty much all the boys and ninety percent of the girls read some kind of comic.

That kind of cultural saturation boggles the mind in today’s cultural landscape. We have grown quite used to a world where having even a ten percent cultural penetration is considered revolutionary.

Sure, they were not all reading the same comics. In fact, there were more titles in print during the World War II era than at any other time since. When a market is that huge, the product always expands to fill it, especially when the established players can’t keep up with demand and that creates opportunities for the little guy. Back then, there were seven major comic companies and tons of little ones with tiny markets and shoestring operations.

That seems like a golden era to me because there were so many opportunities for the bright young creative types to make a name for themselves or at least to find someone who would give them a chance.

Today, we all have access to the means of production and distribution, at least, but getting people’s attention has never been harder.

One little niggle : I have always thought of Liev Schreiber as a fairly intelligent guy, but at as host and narrator of this documentary series, he doesn’t come across that way. Perhaps the problem is that he’s trying to sound smart and that almost never ever works.

Or maybe it’s the writing. I had a major grammar/logic twerk when, in the opening bit, he said that comics “were available everywhere on comic racks and drugstores.”

No, they were available ON comic racks and IN drugstores. They weren’t ON the drugstores. That make make them rather hard to find. What moron wrote this stuff?

Oh well, the great thing about documentaries is that, as long as the people they are interviewing are intelligent and articulate, the rest doesn’t have to be.

Another thing that interested me, as it always does when I watch something about the birth of the comic book and the superhero genre, is the early relationship between the comic strip and the comic book.

The earliest comic books were just reprints of the dominant media form at the time, the comic strip. That is the whole reason we call them comics, even though so few of them even try to be funny.

But what interests me is to try to imagine a time where the funny pages and the comic book existed in the same cultural space. All my life, they have been very different worlds, with the few remaining adventure strips existing as bizarrely anachronistic reminders of a bygone era.

The reason this interests me is that I am a fan of both forms. I love comic books AND comic strips, and so to imagine them merging intrigues me.

Another interesting thing : Superman, the super dude who launched the entire superhero genre, was created by two boys who had grown up picked on and bullied by the other kids during the Great Depression.

So Superman, in that oh so expensive issue of Action Comics, did not fight supervillains, he fought the injustices of the time. He exonerates a woman about to be executed for a crime she did not commit by bringing the judge a signed confession from the real crook, then he busts a senator for colluding with a defense contractor for personal profit.

So you heard it here first, folks. Superman started off as a socialist!

It really makes me appreciate Supes all the more to imagine him righting the human scale wrongs of his time. It seems like a form of heroism that might seem a little nearsighted compared to big scale villains and cosmic struggles, but I think it would make for a far more relatable and meaningful kind of heroism.

One of the things I really liked about the Joss Whedon show Angel in its first season is that it had that very kind of street level heroism. Angel worked out of a phone booth and took on things like abusive boyfriends or corrupt politicians.

I think the world needs that kind of hero. A hero who is not too big and important to take on the real problems that people have in their daily lives. Someone you can imagine showing up to help you with your crazy boss, your venomous ex, or your teenager who is just plain out of control.

This street level Superman is clearly the product of two boys who had suffered a lot of personal injustice in their lives (wow, even back in the Depression, nerds got shit on) and who wanted to create the ultimate avenger (small a) of all the wrongs of the world.

That makes me feel more connected with the character. I was bullied a lot as a kid too, and I can well imagine my dreaming up someone to stick up for me and keep me safe and make sure the bullies never got away with hurting anyone ever again.

Of course, being a child of the Eighties, I probably would have come up with someone a lot like Mister T.

Different times, different heroes.

In fact, part of me wants to do that now. To just show up during lunch and recess at a local elementary school and police the schoolyard.

Of course, you can’t beat up a little kid no matter how much the little shit might deserve it, so I would do the next best thing and document the abuse via video, then take the proof to the school and demand they take action.

I’m not sure what my hero name would be. The Anti-Bully? Camera Man? That Fat Guy Who Hangs Around In Playgrounds And Creeps Us Out?

Oh well. That’s it from me for today, folks. Felicity, I am so sorry I made you wait for me.

I will talk to you nice folks again tomorrow.