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The Myth of Eco: Cultural Populism and Comics Studies

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For decades, Umberto Eco's essay ‘The myth of Superman’ has been cited as the authoritative study of superhero comics. More recently, however, Eco's work has been a site of argument as cultural and media studies scholars such as Angela Ndalianis and Henry Jenkins contend that the narrative logic of contemporary superhero comics has become more complex than Eco imagines. These scholars replace Eco's ‘oneiric climate’ of suspended time with models of multiple and intertextual narratives that extend across diverse media. While Eco's observations are more historically contingent than he acknowledges, his analysis remains more applicable than his critics allow. Some scholars have misread Eco's arguments and overstated the radicalism of contemporary superhero narratives. This chapter argues that it is time to re-evaluate Eco's work and move beyond the populist, predominantly celebratory tone of his critics.

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References

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References

  1. De Haven, T. (2010), Our Hero: Superman on Earth, New Haven: Yale University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Eco, U. (1962), ‘Il mito di “Superman” e la dissoluzione del tempo’, in E. Castelli (ed.), Demitizzazione e immagine, Padua: CEDAM, pp. 131–48.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Eco, U. (1972), ‘The myth of Superman’ (trans. N. Chilton), Diacritics, 2:1, pp. 14–22.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. Farmer, R. (2009), ‘Marker, Resnais, Varda: Remembering the Left Bank group’, Senses of Cinema, 52, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/52/marker-resnais-varda-remembering-the-left-bank-group/. Accessed 24 May 2013.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. Ford, S. and Jenkins, H. (2009), ‘Managing multiplicity in superhero comics: An interview with Henry Jenkins’, in P. Harrigan and N. Wardrip-Fruin (eds), Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 303–11.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Gordon, I. (1998), Comic Strips and Consumer Culture, 1890–1945, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Gough, A. and Millar, M. (2001), Smallville, Burbank: WB Television Network.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Hatfield, C. (2012), Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Heer, J. and Worcester, K. (eds) (2004), Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Jenkins, H. (2009), ‘“Just Men in Tights”: Rewriting Silver Age comics in an era of multiplicity’, in A. Ndalianis (ed.), The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, New York: Routledge, pp. 16–43.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. McGuigan, J. (1992), Cultural Populism, London: Routledge.49
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Miller, J. (2009), ‘Superman annual sales figures’, The Comics Chronicles, http://www.comichron.com/titlespotlights/superman.html. Accessed 24 May 2013.
  13. Moore, A., Swan, C., and Pérez, G. ([1986] 2009), Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? #423, New York: DC Comics.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Ndalianis, A. (2009), ‘Enter the Aleph: Superhero worlds and hypertime realities’, in A. Ndalianis (ed.), The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero, New York: Routledge, pp. 270–90.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Saunders, B. (2011), Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes, London: Continuum.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. Wright, B. (2001), Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
     [Google Scholar]

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