Well here's where I stray into politics, so everybody put on your kevlar! :lol:
Frankly I think even though many critics have labeled superheroes as fascist fantasies and slaves to the Establishment, the truth is they were born of a liberal mindset. Like most Liberal heroes (FDR, JFK, etc) they fight for the "little guy" from a position of assumed superiority. They exist in (or believe they exist in) a world where there will always be an underclass incapable of defending themselves and so, out of a sense of "noblesse oblige," they look out for them and see to their interests. Yes, there is honor and virtue in the concept of a millionaire like Don Diego or Bruce Wayne fighting for the peasants, just as there is nobility in a Kennedy or Roosevelt leaving his ivory tower to fight for migrant workers, but there is also a certain arrogance and moral presumption as well. So I think you need to regard comics in the larger context of American's notions of who and what we are.
America is a land of paradoxes, a land dedicated to the notion of equality which nonetheless recognizes a select few historic figures as "more equal than others." A country that fought to be rid of a monarchy, then spent the next 200 years trying to create a new royalty out of politicians, inventors, athletes and movie stars. We may say we believe in the equality of the sanitation engineer to the star quarterback, but when push comes to shove we look to the beautiful, the wealthy and the strong for leadership and direction.
In that sense, it doesn't surprise me at all that superheroes tend to be geniuses, millionaires or people with glamorous vocations. I for one would rather read about a guy with a mansion and a fortune's worth of crime-fighting gadgets and vehicles than, to use your example, a cabbie who lives in a flea-ridden apartment and has nothing more in his crime-fighting arsenal than a mask and a set of brass knuckles. Does that make me elitist? Maybe, or maybe it just means I prefer seeing cool designs and enjoying, however vicariously, the life of a rich man. I'm from the camp that sees comics as escapism, and I prefer to escape to a world more glamorous than the one I'm escaping from!
Sometimes we need the benefit of hindsight to recognize our bias, I'll grant you. If you read 1912's "Tarzan of the Apes," the subtext is pretty shocking by today's standards, but readily accepted at the time. Basically the idea is that a British nobleman is by his genetic heritage so far superior to the common man that he can survive and excel at anything, and by extension, that certain other races aren't good for much of anything. Maybe there is a bit of that at work in Batman, but I will hold to the idea that most of this stuff is market-driven; the object is to write what sells, not to preach a dogma.
Why are superheroes usually loners? What are the functions of side-kicks? These are things that I can't believe just "worked out" randomly, as the best possible solution to stroytelling problems, in a political and moral vacuum.
Not a vacuum, none of us live in a vacuum. We're all the product of our times. But it's much harder for me to believe that these guys sat down and deliberately worked to make a political statement, or even analyzed in any great detail the psychological or political reasons a character works. In most cases, these guys were just kids...they simply knew what they liked in other characters and they stole it! Batman was a riff on Zorro, Superman was part John Carter and part Hugo Danner, and so on.
I think the side-kick thing
did just "work out." Someone -- most now agree it was Jerry Robinson -- decided kids needed a point of identification so they invented Robin. It worked. Others saw Robin worked, so they copied him as closely as possible.
For me, that's the history of comics in a nutshell...it's a process of trial and error, run everything you've got up the flagpole, and when one idea out of a hundred succeeds, everyone rushes to imitate it in as many variations as legally possible. At the end of the day, the fact that some thigns work and some don't says more about us as an audience than it does about them as creators. America has embraced the notion of the aristocrat as defender, and for the most part yawned at "working-man heroes." The publishers just give us what we want.
Personally I think it boils down to readers asking, "If this guy is so great, why can't he get a better job?" :lol:
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