The presence of JG Jones, the author along with Mark Millar's Wanted, during the fifth edition of the convention Mantova Comics & Games, may be an opportunity to reflect on the figure of the hero in the history of American comics. The masterpiece of Top Cow, in fact, is part in a way that the heroes Americans have perpetrated the dawn of comics today.
The first were those guys all muscles and myth, embodied in an indelible way by Flash Gordon, hero without blemish and without fear. Absolute values, satisfying, mystifying. Identical to those heroes of the novel of the appendix, dull and numbing.
In the Golden Age hero has become superhero. We think the first, messiah, Superman. Aliens arrive on earth who pretends to be human, and therefore weak, to mask his identity and his undoubted superiority. Despite his incredible powers, which might quickly heal the wounds of the world, our hero merely to save Metropolis in a repeated pattern whereby everything returns in the starting conditions. As the hero of Superman doing his amazing stories because companies must do, without choice or awareness. Its function is to mystify, to console the reader that he sees the redemption served on a silver platter, without effort, without commitment. Superman is a messiah without religion, a savior surface an hour of escapism that allows showing the muscles and whispering that everything will be fine.
Then came Lee Stam. And with him superheroes with superproblemi . Here, too, think of the most representative, or Spiderman. Peter Parker, a poor suburb of nerd, gets hit by a wave of powers and, in spite of himself, of responsibility. We all know that, upset by the death of his uncle, our hero wiry, like a repeating mantra "With great power comes great responsibility" has become the first hero of the comic, or nearly so, to be constantly in doubt. To act or not act, to live his life or save someone else's. In short, the figure of the hero in one piece starts to crack.
(more ...)
0 comments:
Post a Comment