27 thoughts on “20 Key Superhero Texts”

1. I’m not going to try to list 20 selections, since I would probably repeat a lot of what’s on both lists, but here are some other ideas on what could/should be included:

   Frank Miller’s Daredevil
   Jack Kirby’s New Gods
   Grant Morrison’s Animal Man or All-Star Superman
   Runaways, by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona
   X-Force/X-Statix, by Peter Milligan and Mike Allred
   Kyle Baker’s Plastic Man
   And hell, if you want to count stuff like Asterix or Sailor Moon, I’ll suggest One Piece

   I’m kind of interested in Chris’s list as a collection of stuff that’s “important” rather than stuff that’s necessarily good. For instance, Kingdom Come is certainly influential, but I think that influence has mostly been negative, what with it’s over-serious take on superhero mythos and its part in elevating Alex Ross to a high level of acclaim that I don’t think he deserves. Also, Green Lantern/Green Arrow is often cited as an important milestone in comics history, but man, those comics do not hold up well at all, and even with some nice art, they’re grating as hell to try to read.

2. Hah; I told Chris he should drop both of those! Instead he added Crisis, which is also unreadable and awful…

3. What is the justification for Sailor Moon, exactly? As opposed to, say, Japanese versions of Batman and Superman (which were licensed but had no relation to the American continuities) or a tokusatsu hero like Kamen Rider? Because it’s familiar and relatively easy to find?

4. While Chris’ list would do a better job of covering the conventionally accepted greatest hits, I think Noah’s might generate more interesting conversations. I would try to find room for some Jack Cole Plastic Man or late 40s Captain Marvel to show how whimsy/absurdism/self-parody could be incorporated into straight superhero stories. For Kirby I would use Kamandi #29, about a tribe of ignorant gorillas worshiping Superman’s empty costume and feats without understanding what they symbolize. I would also want to represent some of the early Image stuff that may be garbage in an aesthetic or storytelling sense, but which gets at part of the core appeal of these things for many people. “Key” doesn’t mean “best” or even “good”.

5. I’d recommend selections from material that inspired, directly or indirectly, the early superhero comics. Examples:

   The Scarlet Pimpernel, Emma Orczy
   The Tarzan and John Carter novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs
   The Shadow novels, “Maxwell Grant”
   The Doc Savage novels, “Lester Dent”
   Wash Tubbs & Captain Easy, Roy Crane
   Terry and the Pirates, Milton Caniff
   Flash Gordon, Alex Raymond
   The Tarzan newspaper strips, Burne Hogarth

6. How about EC Segar’s Popeye?

7. Sailor Moon is (a) one of the most popular comics of all time, (b) a really interesting twist on superheroes for a different audience (female, Japanese), (c) aesthetically daring and valuable, imo.

8. Hah! Segar’s Popeye would be clever, wouldn’t it? I don’t like those enough to put them on a list for myself, but could be fun.

9. The Popeye boxing-match Sunday pages would make for a great comparison with the Simon & Kirby Captain America fight scenes. I think Kirby was taking his lead from Segar.

10. I suppose that makes sense. It’s hard for me to see this from a non-Japanese perspective, though, where SM is highly derivative (it’s pretty much Saint Seiya with a romance plot), though it’s lasting popularity and remediation alone would put it on such a list. I would take issue with “aesthetically daring” as well. It pains me to say this, because I think SM is both interesting and fun (I like it!), but it looks like all other shojo manga from the 90s.

11. Well, I think shojo is aesthetically daring! It’s all where you’re coming from, of course, but if you’re looking from the world of American superhero tropes, shojo is coming from left field.

12. I’d also say the romance elements of Sailor Moon are pretty central, so I don’t think adding those is just a cosmetic change.

13. My list is VERY tentative. I plan to expand it and then try to trim again. So I’m adding: Chadwick’s Concrete, Cole’s Plastic Man, Vaughn’s Runaways, and Ware’s Acme Novelty Library #10. Also something by Kelly Sue De Connick.

14. Oh, and Elektra: Assassin is one of my all-time favorites. But I have a chapter devoted to its visual analysis, so I get to cheat and not include it in this list/chapter.

15. Here’s what I’ve taught in my ENGL 121 comics course:

    1. The first year of Action Comics (up through the Ultra-Humanite’s first appearance, so you can talk about where the apolitical rot sets in).

    2. Ditko and Lee’s Spider-Man, preferably from the intro of Electro through to issue #19 (where Peter comes back and kicks the Goblin’s butt)

    3. Something by Kirby, either the FF right after the Galactus storyline (so you get the intro of Black Panther as well as Doom stealing the Surfer’s powers) or all of OMAC (which reads to me as a dark, dark take on superhero power fantasies)

    4. Watchmen, of course.

    5. Ms. Marvel’s first two trades–as I argue in class, her battle with the Inventor is a deliberate rewrite of the first year of Action Comics (human vs. machine)

16. And with Panther’s Rage coming out in October, I’d totally add that.

17. Dunno how important accessibility is to yr list, Chris, but wouldn’t you struggle to get Acme #10 for yr students to read? Iirc it’s not reprinted in Jimmy Corrigan.

    But that’s a solid list of ‘key’ texts even if, as Noah said, some of them are unreadable (or of otherwise middling quality). A ‘best’ list would look quite different.

    Personally, I’d try to make room for swan/boring/plastino/shaffenberger Superman (aka weisinger-era) and (early)infantino flash. You could easily make the case for ‘flash of two worlds’ as a key text.

18. Mostly the list made me think of work that could serve as contrast or counterpoint, eg

    the final issue of OMAC to show how Kirby went off the deep end (in a good way) without Lee to hold him back

    Or some simon/kirby romance work to show how they fed into the marvel aesthetic

    Romita’s first issue of spider-man, to show the difference between ditkos auteur vision and the slick commercial blandness that followed him and kirby (for the same reason, maybe some buscema fantastic four)

    Some early antiheroes – everett’s mass-murdering namor or hanks’ stardust

    Scioli/barber transformers vs gi joe – not at all a superhero comic but an instructive example of alternative approaches to toyetic ip that Marvel and Dc have generally eschewed. This is what superhero comics *could* look like

    For the same reason, brendan mccarthy’s issue of Solo

    As has already been suggested, some 30s/40s adventure strips, to show what siegel/shuster/finger/’kane’ were (generally poorly) aping

    And, fuck it, Martin Vaughan-James’ the cage, to show that the choice in superhero comics to feature characters moving and acting in comprehensible *is* a choice, and that comics don’t have to have any of those things. (Also because the cage is fucking excellent, although you might need a trigger warning on it…)

19. Have you considered an issue or two of Sensation Comics as an example of the shotgun approach so many golden age books used, piling several unrelated heroes together under a single title. Besides Wonder Woman it also has Wildcat which seems to be a big influence on Miller’s work, and a few other odd characters (i.e. The Gay Ghost) that showcase different types of superheroes from that era.

    Also, how about some of Ditko’s Charleton books to give more context to Spider-Man and Watchmen? There are some great issues of Blue Beetle and some really objectivist ones depending on which way you want to go with that.

20. Ah, so many more wonderful choices!

21. I just began listing any superhero thing I found somehow noteworthy. When I counted them, I had exactly twenty!

    1. Captain Klutz (MAD parody)
    2. Cutie Honey (anime serial)
    3. The Phantom (comic)
    4. Judge Dread (comic)
    5. The Mask (comic)
    6. Mandrake (comic)
    7. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (novel)
    8. Empowered (Adam Warren)
    9. Kekko Kamen
    10. The Toxic Avenger (films)
    11. Misfits (TV serial)
    12. Flaming Carrot (comic)
    13. Superman (Fleischer Studios)
    14. Foodang (it was pretty funny, I think)
    15. Paperinik (comic)
    16. Batman (1966)
    17. Batman & Robin (1997)
    18. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (The first movie, i think)
    19. Enigma (comic)
    20. Darkwing Duck (TV serial)

22. Captain Klutz! That’s a great choice; I love Don Martin. Empowered’s a nice choice too.

23. I would also second the addition of Golden Age Captain Marvel. Not only because they are fun, but you could discuss the legal climate at the time and how the shutting down of Captain Marvel eventually lead to Otto Binder turning Superman comics into Captain Marvel comics in the 1950’s.

    Also Captain Marvel can lead to Miracleman, which can lead to Neil Gaiman which could lead to Angela which could lead to a whole discussion of how the climate of creator ownership has changed.

    They aren’t “good” comics, but what about the early Image Comics or Jim Lee’s X-Men #1? The disposable nature of comics lead to the high prices of golden age comics and the publishers to this day still try to create “collectiblity”. It informs the stories and how people handle the physical objects as well.

    Lastly, can I beg you to make a 20 Key Non-Superhero texts? I’m very curious about how people outside of comics that say watched Diary of Teenage Girl would navigate to the “classics”.

24. Hah…20 non superhero texts is really broad! there’s strips, manga, memoir…not sure how I’d do “everythign but superheroes…”

25. Hahaha good point!

    I guess I originally imagined “key American works that were published as comic books: non-superhero” probably with a focus on small press or self published stuff from Zap on. Maybe that’s an overly format based idea.

    But since superheros is a genre maybe the better alternative would be focusing on genres: memoir, horror, humor, “drama” in the Oscars sense.

26. I wouldn’t count Sailor Moon as the key introduction to Japanese superheroes. That would be, of course, the anime TV series Astro Boy, based on Tezuka’s manga Mighty Atom. It was syndicated all over America in the mid 1960s and was sensationally popular. It was
    quickly followed by such superheroes as Eighth Man, Gigantor, and Speed Racer — all from Japan.

27. Using a fairly broad ‘superhero’ definition (and these are for significance, not necessarily for quality of text) :

    And I’m doing this without noting any of the comments.

    1. Action Comics 1
    2. Amazing Fantasy 15
    3. Detective Comics 27
    4. Watchmen
    5. Mighty Atom / AstroBoy
    6. Akira
    7. Dark Knight Returns
    8. Wolverine mini (Claremont / Miller)
    9. Vol.3 of Morrison’s Animal Man
    10. Apocalypse War (Judge Dredd)
    11. Moore’s Miracleman
    12. Sandman arc – Season of Mists (Gaiman and artists)
    13. Lee / Kirby Fantastic Four (pick an arc)
    14. Green Lantern : Rebirth (precursor to the nostalgic view of superheroes)
    15. Spider-Man : The Night Gwen Stacy Died
    16. Spawn #1
    17. Invaders #1
    18. Eisner’s Spirit.
    19. Segar’s Popeye.
    20. Falk’s The Phantom.

Comments are closed.