Perhaps the biggest event in the Marvel Universe over the past decade (and they have been churning out major events most summers) was precipitated by a superhero team's preoccupation not with saving lives but appearing cool on a reality show. Big Man Japan stars a superhero who sports advertising on his chest and is bullied by his agent for not getting high enough ratings for a battle. After the horrors of the 1990s, when "realism" became a by-word for "nasty," perhaps the superhero is pondering the best way to mesh with society's obsession with celebrity.
Wonder Women (being shown at the GFF) follows the history of the superheroine through comics, film and television: the documentary's preoccupation with the mainstream representation of action women does ensure that most fantasy fiction is excluded. Although most strongly identified with the comic book, super-powered characters have niches in all sorts of fiction - but remained a marginal interest.
Until the advent of spiffy FX, flying, shooting beams of energy out of your eyes or summoning thunder was not the best qualification for being a movie star. Too difficult to fake realistically on film, the amazing growing, shrinking, burning and stabbing superhero was kept on the page. Suddenly, however, the movie mogul have become less frightened by the superhero, and are making films that turn already iconic figures (Spider-Man, Captain America, The Green Lantern) into cinematic legends.
Kapow!@GFF is curated by Mark Millar, who did some great Authority comics (that's the one with the gay (thinly-disguised) versions of Superman and Batman and applied superhero logic to real political issues) and some controversial Marvel series, and John McShane, whom I once met on a train and seems to be a one-man hub of creative resources (he can sometimes be found in Plan B comics). Their selection is a nice mash up of the popular (three of those Marvel Avengers films, including Thor, which ought to appeal to fans of faux Shakespearian dialogue), Alex Salmond introducing his favourite geek film (still a secret, but let's hope it is something embarrassing), serious documentaries (Wonder Women! and Cartoon College) and a film in which Kevin Smith presents himself, in the closing credits, as the creepiest man in film (seriously, dude, watch those comments about fifteen year old vampire chicks).
One of the core arguments about comics in Comic-Con IV: A Fan's Hope is that the geek have inherited the earth (Smith's ill judged monologue tries to suggest that getting laid is a sign of how cool something has become. Sigh). While I still think Millar and McShane could have set their sights higher - wasn't "Call Me" Dave Cameron free? - getting the First Minister to not just admit he is a geek but to come along and present the film shows that even top politicians are bowing to the power of the marginalised.
This acceptance by the mainstream isn't however, matched by a corresponding respectability - it's still not cool to read the X-Men on the Subway. The coverage around Judge Dredd's apparent homosexuality has reinforced notions that a comic addressing a real life issue is a novelty - and that the fandom is conservative. The advent of the successful superhero movie is not an expression of acceptance of heroes on their own terms, but the result of its fusion with celebrity culture. Throughout Comic-Con IV, it is the arrival of celebrities - Kevin Smith or the guy who plays Captain America that really gets the crowd going.
Nope, lost my point. Sorry.
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