The Rest Is History - 130. Superheroes

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

From their origins in the 1930's running parallel to the rise of fascism in Europe, to the Adam West camp of the 1960's, to the gritty modern reboots - what has made Superheroes a cultural phenomenon, and what mirror does it hold up to society? To sign up to the brand new Rest Is History Club, go restishistorypod.com or click here. Benefits for members include an extra episode every week, a live streamed show every month, ad-free listening, and access to a Rest Is History chatroom where we'll be discussing episodes and suggesting subjects for future shows. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. We have made you, O Adam, a creature neither of heaven nor earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower brutish forms of life or you will be able through your own decision to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine that is god talking to man in the oration of the dignity of man written in 1486 by the renaissance humanist giovanni pico

della mirandola and it is also the way that the comic book writer Grant Morrison ends his book Supergods, a history of superheroes in which he says they represent our enduring thirst for the cosmic and the sacral. Now, who better, who better to discuss this subject in the very week the new Spider-Man film comes out than our very own Tom Holland, still for my money, one of the top two Tom Hollands. Dominic, that is so kind of you. So Tom, you took a tiny bit of, I mean, come on, we've mentioned the sacral, but you took a tiny bit of persuasion to do this subject because the existence of Tom Holland is a running sore, isn't it for you?

Well, I don't begrudge his existence, but I think that I suppose what makes it funny for people and people have been making jokes about it for at least, seems like an eternity, is I don't really know anything about superheroes. I mean, I know a bit because you've told me to read Grant Morrison's book and I realised reading it that occasionally I have stumbled across superheroes,

but for some reason they've never, they were never part of my childhood particularly. And so, I mean, it's not an ideal way perhaps to start a podcast to say I don't really know anything about the subject. But you do. I think you know more than you think.

Well, I agree. Because reading Grant Morrison's book, I realise actually I have come across him quite a lot. But, for instance, I've never read a superhero comic. All right. Well, prepare to be educated. I've never read one. Prepare to be educated.

But before you do that, before we do that, Tom, the great news of the week, which we haven't talked about yet, the big news is the amazing response to the launch of what I could see as the Avengers of the history world or the Justice League. Yeah, well, the X-Men are mutants, so I don't know what that's the comparison I'd go for. Oh, okay, I'm betraying my ignorance there. Which is the Rest is History Club, the launch of the Rest Is History Club.

So thank you so much to everybody who signed up. We're delighted to have you on board. To those of you who haven't signed up. Why? Why not? Well, there is that. But, of course, you'll still get your podcast as normal. Of course. Of course. And it is just six bands a month, but I promise not to mention that again.

But, Tom, the thing that I've really enjoyed is dipping into the Discord community. Yes, which sounds very superhero. Very superhero. Yeah, it's like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And it's rather startling because I would not have put you down as someone who was necessarily into dipping into things called the Discord. But it turns out to be your superpower. Yeah, you're really good at it. You've obviously been bitten by a radioactive ant or something. I have.

So in the Discord community, you know, they have a whole thread of people in the Restless History Club who are from the Midlands, a Mercian community. And from East Anglia, I see. You made a very rude joke about mine. Well, there was one guy who went on, he said, is there anyone here from East Anglia? I see. There's an East Anglia one. Which you made a very rude joke about, Mike. Well, there was one guy who went on, he said, is there anyone here from East Anglia?

And I said, well, if you've listened to our CIA podcast, you'll know that Liam Neeson will be along in a minute. Yes, very funny. So it's piled into me, my inability to do a Liam Neeson accent and the fact, ha, ha, ha, ha, that I share the name with the actor who plays Spider-Man. Yeah, we should mention, we've got bonus episodes coming up. Oh, yes.

Sorry. For our members. So the bonus episodes will be out every week. And this week, so Wednesday, the 15th of December at 8pm. 8 o'clock British time. We're doing our first live streamed show for Restless History Club members, which is all about the 1960s. Looking forward to that? I certainly am.

It's a great topic. It's a topic we're both very much interested in you know a lot more about than i do but i i have views yeah i know you have which i know you'll you'll look forward to hearing so if you if you can't make it and you're a restless history club member you will get a chance to um access it afterwards don't worry if you're not a restless history club member well you won't but i mean but you can sign sign up between now and Wednesday and then you get to hear it. Where would you sign up, Tom? You'd go to restlesshistorypod.com.

Very good. All right. Enough of the club promotion. Let's talk about superheroes. Do you have a question? I think you have a question that you'd like to ask. I do. It's from SO3Klauswitz, who put it on the Discord.

He did. And he asked, what caused the sudden rise of superhero stories in the mid-20th century? And that's an absolutely banging question with which to kick the show off. So my answer to that would be it's kind of, there's a kind of sort of almost like a boring logistical reason, which is that in 1933, you have the launch of comic books. So a man called Max Gaines, he, I can't remember what it's called, Something Funnies.

It's the first sort of comic book. It's a way of using the printing presses. It's cheap. Initially, they're reproducing cartoon strips from- It's apparently a four-colour printing process. Yeah. So it's very simple. So it enables that kind of bright-

Exactly. The lurid colours that we- The lurid colours. So it's, I mean So it enables that kind of bright. Exactly. The lurid colors. The lurid colors. So we keep coming to this, that it's kind of technological innovations that then precipitate cultural processes of change. But obviously there are cultural roots to the superhero, aren't there? Longer roots. Well, yeah. We've had a lot of questions about that. So Pederda4 on Twitter, did romans think of mythical heroes the same way

um diego morgado are superheroes of modern mythology henry midgley do you think there's any genealogical link between the modern concept of superheroes and the greek hero have we modernized hercules and made him spider-man has him i mean is modern superheroes morality and reluctance to take human life a symbol of christian morality in contrast to the norse sagas or all right so grant mor Morrison putting it in his book, basically all in the context of ancient mythology. He says super gods, he sees them as, he has that thing about the quote from Giovanni Pico della Mirandola about sort of man caught between the kind of base and the divine and this sort of humanistic kind of reaching for something beyond and all this

kind of stuff now you i know that you don't really buy all that do you amazingly for once you don't see them as christian i don't i don't really think it's anything to do with christianity and you don't it's anything to do with greek myth or norse myth or anything anything like that but okay let me get the counter argument though tom uh which you need to dispel is um you've got thor you've got a lot of sort of greek and roman influences so captain marvel when captain marvel is created he's one of the the first sort of superheroes in the 1940s or whatever and um there's a sort of he gets his powers from solomon hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury, which is Shazam. Shazam. Exactly. Right.

I mean, is that link not obvious there? Or do you think that's just complete window dressing and it's utterly contrived? Older listeners may remember that in the 70s there was a TV show called Mr. Ben. And the plot of Mr. Ben was that Mr. Ben wore a bowler hat. He'd walk along the street. He'd go into a fancy dress shop and the shopkeeper would magically appear and lend him a fancy dress outfit. And it might be a Roman soldier or a caveman or a cowboy or whatever. And Mr. Ben would go into the changing room and he'd put this outfit on. And then he enter a kind of magical world where you know if he put on the caveman show there'd be dinosaurs if you put the romans on he'd be you know an ancient rome or whatever so it would go on

i mean i think that basically that's the level that superheroes operate on um these are essentially it seems to me vigilante figures yeah they're bred of the very specific circumstances of kind of american history which will come towards social history attitudes towards policing um attitudes towards uh the individual um picking up arms to defend the american way of life and basically these are people who are cosplaying they are characters that that may well, you know, you may well get Thor, you may well get Wonder Woman drawing on the Amazons or whatever. But, you know, we're not in the level,

say, of Tolkien with his fantasy. Yeah. Clearly drawing on a deep knowledge of ancient literature, ancient myth, Christian myth, whatever, to amplify his world. None of these characters seem really to have any interest in that. I mean, it's about fights. It's about costumes. And that's basically whether it's, you know, the most basic kind of wham-bam kind of Adam West type Batman cartoon shows where it's played for laughs in its camp or the kind of the Watchmen, the dark, the somber, the kind of Finnegan's Wake version of comic book.

They're still not really interested in any of these kind of mythic antecedents. They're interested in America. Yeah. 20th century America. But hold on. Okay. They're interested in any of these kind of mythic antecedents. They're interested in America, 20th century America. But hold on. Okay, they're interested in 20th century. They're born in 20th century America, and particularly in the 1930s, and we'll come to that in a second. But, for example, Ian B., who's one of our Athelstan members of the Rest is History Club,

he asked a question on the Discord chat, and he says there's a compelling argument that Sherlock Holmes is the original superhero. Do you you agree or he asks about other figures from history who lay the groundwork achilles alexander king arthur robin hood i would say um there is some slight lineage some very faint lineage from robin hood the folk hero he a mask. Who wears a mask and has a hideout and has sidekicks. Yeah. I think Sherlock Holmes, Tom. We talked about Sherlock Holmes as a superhero in our last,

in our Sherlock Holmes podcast. Well, we know that. And I know that from having read Grant Morrison's book, that the guys who invent Batman say that he has the athleticism of D'Artagnan. So one of the, you know, confusingly, he's the fourth musketeer in the three musketeers. Yes. And the brainpower of Sherlock Holmes.

Yeah. So that's a conscious, absolutely kind of. Sherlock Holmes is definitely in the air when they're writing these things. Well, and what I'd also say is that, I mean, we talked about this on the Sherlock Holmes episode, that London is a character in Sherlock Holmes. In a sense, people's understanding of London is still shaped by that. And I would say that Batman's Gotham City has an analogous role.

People call New York Gotham, don't they? I mean, they use the words almost interchangeably. But right the way through, you know, all the way that Batman's being portrayed, New York Gotham is a character in the way that London is a character in the Shilkheim story. I think that's very true. I think that's absolutely right. But I think there are two other characters, actually,

that are worth mentioning that are definitely there when the superhero creators are working in the late 1930s. One of them, very unexpected actually to some listeners, is the Scarlet Pimpernel. And actually lots of comic book historians say the Scarlet Pimpernel is massive. Yeah, tell us about that. Yeah, the Scarlet Pimpernel is created initially in a play

by Baroness Orksy in 1903 and then the book in 1905. So the Scarlet Pimpernel is set in the French Revolution. He rescues, he's masked, he's incredibly swashbuckling, he's like a musketeer. He rescues French aristocrats from the guillotine. But the interesting thing there and what makes him clearly an antecedent of later characters, Clark Kent and Peter Parker and so on, is that he has a dual identity.

So one is the Scarlet Pimpernel, the superhero, and the other is this foppish, effeminate weed called Sir Percy Blakeney. And he plays up to that part, just like Bruce Wayne does, or just like Clark Kent does. He plays the weed to disguise the French about his real identity. And I think most comic book historians say Scarlet Pimpernel is huge in the culture of the 1910s and 1920s. They would all have been aware of it. And the other character who he perhaps partly inspires is Zorro.

Yes, he was also masked. Yeah. And we, I mean, Zorro was very familiar to us, I would imagine, when we grew up. But I think he's kind of forgotten now, isn't he? Do you think kids now know who Zorro is? There was a film, wasn't there? There was a film recently. Yeah, but that's 25 years ago.

Yeah. Which seems recent to us. Yeah, I agree Havago. Which seems recent to us. Yeah, I agree. Yes. So he's the same thing. Now, he really is a masked vigilante that he's created in 1919. He has that dual identity. So he's Don Diego de la Vega, but he's also Zorro.

He has the Z symbol that he kind of carves into things and stuff with his sword, which is very sort of like the bat symbol or whatever. So I think they're clearly in the ether in the 30s. But also, I mean, supervillains. So I would say Fantomas, this super criminal who haunts Paris, rather in the way that the Joker and Penguin come to haunt Gotham City. Fu Manchu, I suppose. Fu Manchu, absolutely.

And this is the kind of intersection point between, I guess, kind of Bond and superheroes is this idea of global conspiracies. Yes. But whereas the Bond ones are, however, Baroque-ly kind of grounded in contemporary geopolitics. And I know that Superman and Batman do take on Hitler in the war. Essentially, the villains are completely abstracted from contemporary politics. Yeah, they are.

Well, I know that Superman at first, though, is a bit more grounded, I would say. Well, it comes, I mean, in more recent ones, I know it is more rooted. But I think kind of, you know, through the 40s, 50s, 60s, these are, I mean, it's not, it's, well, it's for children. Well, let's start with Superman, because Superman's the first canonical superhero, isn't he, I suppose. He's born in 1938, middle of 1938. And what makes him emblematic of the sort of story generally is like so many of these superheroes, they're created by Jewish writers and illustrators who are themselves kind of dual identity because they've changed their names often.

Right, which is, I think, another reason for not thinking that this is necessarily Christian, because people so often say about Superman, isn't he? I mean, he comes from Krypton, which dies, and he's reborn and all this kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's... But some writers have said it's the story of Moses

in the bull rushes or whatever. So I think there are elements perhaps of that. Um, as, as there comes to be with, with, um, with Spider-Man as well,

that perhaps there are echoes of kind of biblical prophets who were called to, to save their people. But I think that I really, really think it's, this should not be overdone. I mean, these are, these are basically, it seems to me fantasies about, well, so there's a question

here from Tom McTague, a very distinguished political journalist for The Atlantic. Are superheroes essentially right-wing conservative as they are romantic fantasies of individual heroism, restoring honour and justice to a decadent world? And that does seem to me, basically, to be what they're about. You think that's what, but I don't see i don't think i think because i think they're sheriffs cleaning up the town let's take superman superman is emerges in action comics number one in uh it's actually the spring of the car isn't he's 38 throwing a car on someone the issue is dated june but he appears in the spring he's the product of two guys they're

very young and they're jerry siegel and joe schuster they have met at high school um jewish background actually sort of so many of these people have got ashkenazi eastern european jewish roots they've changed their names and they're frozen out of kind of new york publishing aren't they right yes and that's actually the case of almost all these people that they have struggled in some way their comic books are seen as de classe they are but they go into writing comic books because that's essentially the only way that they can exactly get paid for writing exactly so they create superman and superman it's 1938 so america is still actually really in the grip of the great depression later than britain is so um it's politically very febrile. The Superman character, the costume,

it hadn't occurred to me until I sort of read up on this, that he's based on circus strongmen. Yes, that's right. He wears his pants outside. The pants and the tights, I mean, which seems so laughable to us today, at the time were seen as emblematic of great strength. Masculinity. Yeah, absolutely.

Not at all ridiculous um because ridiculous is a big fan of strong men and fitness i mean it is a bit ridiculous i mean it is a kind of showmanship i mean yes i suppose circus knowing that you're seeing something that's not real but do they see that do they see that in the 30s they see that same eyes i don't they see it quite the same eyes as we well maybe but to a degree i think but at the beginning superman has this sort of social activist side so he's taking on crooked businessmen crooked financiers people who are exploiting the poor there's a definite kind of liberal new deal politics yeah but but it's also i mean why do why do you have to rely on a superman to do that for you why can't you rely on the police why can't you rely on strong trade unions is that what you're strong

trade unions exactly you have to you know you have to turn to this kind of big guy with with his pants but there are two other political elements one is that um uh the clark kent character the character of the sort of downtrodden nerdy guy who comes good um that's quite a theme in kind of interwar culture the little man people would call it in brit, the sort of the underrated, underestimated chap who actually triumphs over all those who've... I mean, that's also, you know, slightly Horatio Alger in America, the kind of the poor boy made good kind of thing. I mean, that's absolutely rooted in the culture of the time. The other thing is that a lot of people who've written about comic books point out that Superman

is, of course, an immigrant. Yeah, he's a newcomer. Because he's come from Krypton. He's got to come from somewhere. But these stories are written by people who are often second-generation immigrants themselves. So it's the sort of assimilation into the American way

of outsiders. And that's there in the Superman story. Although in a way Superman isn't assimilated, is he? I mean, that's the in the superman story although uh in a way superman isn't assimilated is he i mean that's the point i mean all these superheroes are not in the long run assimilated and that becomes a theme yeah the way up to the present day you know because x-men are mutants um batman's basically a kind of psychopath i mean all these people and the more kind of sophisticated reworkings of these stories make play with the fact

that actually there's something slightly difficult about these people in capes and cloaks kind of beating people up. Well, I think... So Clark Kent and Superman is presumably a kind of embodiment of the schizophrenic quality of an immigrant. Yeah, both belonging and not belonging, I suppose so. Of an immigrant. Yeah.

Both belonging and not belonging, I suppose. And that's also true. I mean, it's almost schizophrenic. I mean, Batman. So Batman is created, what, a year later? Bob Kane, who's actually Robert Kahn, another Ashkenazi Jewish writer. Bob Kane and Bill Finger. So that's Detective Comics in March 1939. Now, Batman

is slightly different because he's... He doesn't have a superpower, does he? No. So he really is the Scarlet Pimpernel in Gotham City. He is a rich, feckless aristocrat or somebody who appears to be that, like Bruce Wayne. And even the Christopher Nolan films have that element to them.

His parents have been killed by muggers. Right. And becomes a vigilante. So obviously that's kind of, you can see that as reflecting anxieties about crime and all that sort of stuff. And a huge question. Yeah. Why does he dress up as a bat?

Well, there's people have sort of talked, there's been lots of arguments about this because what's interesting with all these characters is there's always subsequent rows between the writer and the illustrator about who the real inventor is there's a claim isn't there that they got the inspiration for the bat wings from leonardo da vinci yes this ornithocta yes flying machine um but you know why he's called bruce wayne uh no so his his name says bill finger the writer bruce Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert the Bruce.

Oh, he's Scottish. And he then thought he wanted a name that reminded Americans of colonialism. He tried Adams, Hancock, sort of founding fathers, U.S. War of Independence figures. And then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne, who apparently I'd never heard of him, actually. He's a general in the American-US War of Independence. And he gives them that name. So hence, Bruce Wayne. One of the great podcasters is. Batman is, well, we're both learning.

We're learning all the time, Tom. Well, I did what I learned. I did think this was amazing. And it's a slight problem because this is a podcast. But the Joker. Yeah. Batman's long-running adversary um the look of him apparently came from this 1928 silent film the man who laughs yeah featuring a guy conrad fight had you seen that

before so i looked it up and it's i mean i don't know how they got away with it it's exactly the same it is exactly but that's how all these comic books work nowadays. I mean, they're seen as very kind of lowbrow kids' entertainment. So obviously they're ripping off things left, right and centre. And of course they get away with it because no one thinks at the time they're creating franchises that will last the 21st century. They just think this is disposable pulp fiction that will be almost instantly forgotten. So you have all these.

I believe you have a... Do you not have some sort of list of amusing characters you didn't? I do. I do. Because, of course, Superman and Batman, very successful, and presumably turbocharged by the war, right? Yeah, I think so. So they're fighting Hitler.

Captain America. Captain America, of course. Fighting Hitler and everything. And so through the war, the war years, you have this vast explosion of superheroes. And so there were some that didn't make it. So this kind of Darwinian struggle for superheroes to make it through. So there was Madame Fatal. That's a good name.

Who was actually Richard Stanton, that's good who was who was actually richard stanton a retired actor who fought crime disguised as an old lady okay that wasn't i can see why that didn't work out um this this is one uh mentioned by capel loft who is obviously trying to suck up to us after formerly a friend of the show then kind of a well he set up a rival world cup of kings and queens but now he's really he's changed his ways he has he's reformed um and he he nominated the deacon who is a reformed burglar who who fights crime disguised as a church of england clergyman i can't i can't understand why that hasn't caught on why don't they make fun of him

why isn't tom holland playing the deacon that's my question there's the gay ghost the gay what's the gay ghost the gay ghost is uh an 18th century nobleman in ireland who's a ghost right okay um that's a superpower he's a he's a he's okay i can also yeah uh super there's a superillain called the Sportsmaster whose villainy consists of throwing sports kit at people. Well, like kind of a cricket box or like some cones. Well, I was kind of thinking, you know, those things that you jump over in 1950s gyms. Sort of hurdles.

Yeah, and medicine balls and things like that. But I mean, quite... I would find that terrifying, actually. Yeah, I know. But I mean, how do you go around being, you know, robbing banks or whatever, lugging a great bag full of sports kit just in case you're attacked?

So you can kind of see why that one didn't work out. Yeah. That's terrible. There's a fellow who's got a lot of bees. No, there's no... A man who's got a lot of bees. A man who's got lots of bees hidden in his belt, and he releases them. I can't remember what he's called,

the red bee or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, it's all very... But somebody who's... It has nothing to do with the ancient antecedents. Well, no, but it's history, isn't it? Because, I mean, it's the culture of the 1930s and 40s. It is. But what I'm saying is that this is not drawing on deep-rooted cultural memories. Okay, here's a character for you, Tom, that does draw on deep-rooted memories,

i.e. the myth of the Amazons. So all the characters we talked about have been there. Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman. So Wonder Woman, she arrives. So we've had Superman, 38, Batman, 39. Wonder Woman comes along in 1941. And she is Princess Diana.

Of the Amazons. Of Themyscira, which is an island inhabited by Amazons. She's the daughter of Queen Hippolyta. Yeah. Yes. So she has a very impressive kind of ancient world pedigree, doesn't she? She does.

But she is, you know, this is still Mr. Ben. Right. Because actually what Wonder Woman is drawing on is not deep memories of ancient Greece, but the fantasies of a guy called William Moulton Marston, who was a professor of psychology. He's said to be the inventor of the lie detector, isn't he? But apparently he ripped it off from his wife.

His wife invented it. And he then kind of passed it off. Well, this is an extraordinary story. So he's like a Harvard-educated psychologist who's credited, not least by himself, with having invented the polygraph and doing all this. But he lied. His personality is actually well ironically um all these personalities yes so he is married to another psychologist called elizabeth but they live with they have a kind of they have it's not

even it's not yeah they have the three of them in it they really are three of them in this marriage yeah and they're always tying each other up olive Olive Byrne. And they're always doing bondage with each other and stuff. And so Wonder Woman, of course, has her magic lasso. Yeah. She's always tying people up. But more germainly, Wonder Woman herself is always being chained, bound, gagged. And he's completely upfront about this, isn't he? Well, no, but the more he writes them

the more the more the bondage comes in exactly so there's this great line at one point wonder woman actually cries out great girdle of aphrodite i'm so tired of being tied up but you know she isn't really you know she loves it he he's utterly upfront about it so he's fascinated by comic books he thinks they're the way to he's they're very about it so he's fascinated by comic books he thinks they're the way to he's they're very kind of idealistic kind of highbrow people marston and and marston and burn or whatever they're called and he says he says himself wonder woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who i believe should rule the world he says too many girls lack force strength and power

he wants to the obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman well he he but he thinks that there is strength in submission so there's an amazing plot where wonder woman rescues um a group of women who've been enslaved by an evil Nazi and the Nazi gets defeated. But the twist is that the girls who've been rescued then miss being slaves. So Wonder Woman sends them off to the Amazons

where they can all live happily as slaves. It's very strange. There's another quote from him here. The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self can we hope for a stable peaceful human society and the risks the risk the risk of of women not being allowed to express this um is conveyed through the character of Dr. Poison.

Tell me about Dr. Poison. So Dr. Poison is an evil supervillain who loves humiliating women, confronts Wonder Woman, and amazingly is revealed to be a woman whose love of submission has been frustrated and therefore has corrupted her into becoming this evil figure. Yeah. So you can see why there aren't deep waters. And obviously in the 1950s, there was this tremendous backlash, wasn't there? Yes.

And there's this guy who's himself a kind of a psychiatrist, I think, called Frederick Wertham, who writes a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, published in 1954, which causes this tremendous stir. It's taken up by congressional hearings and stuff, where he basically says comic books and superhero stories are corrupting youth. He says at one point, kids who read Superman won't listen to their parents or teachers because their parents and teachers will seem so weak and bland by comparison. Ergo, we should stamp out Superman. But I mean, that's that's the kind of equivalent of saying that we can't allow vigilantes and sheriffs to kind of shoot people in the Wild West.

That exactly proves my point. Well, I mean, the interesting thing is he's loathed and hated by comic book enthusiasts because they see him as having... But obviously, some of the things that he identifies, so he identifies the bondage. And he does identify what some people might see as a slightly fascistic, or you clearly see as a slightly fascistic element to superhero stories. So the idea of a Superman, somebody with powers who takes the law into their own hands. Wortham says in 1954, all this stuff is terrible. And I guess some people today will probably agree with him. them well i mean i think that that's what's interesting about the the turn that public morality has taken which is that actually it's a reprise of quite a lot of perspectives in the 50s so now you know in the 60s and 70s and 80s you know brilliant bondage woohoo now it's it's seen as more problematic again or is it uh you know these these are and i guess that that's why superheroes are interesting is that they do hold a mirror up to, because they're an incredibly democratic, incredibly popular form.

They do hold up a really, really fascinating mirror to the way that neuroses and cultural anxieties and morality panics and virtue spirals operate in the United States over the past century. And you say the United States because they are, it's interesting, they have, of course, been attempts to have, there was Captain Britain and so on, but they are really specifically American, aren't they? And I think that's why I was never interested in them, particularly. Because you're Americanophobic. No, it's just, they just seem very, very foreign to me.

So I guess, I mean, I had no problem reading Asterix. I loved Asterix and Tintin. They seem kind of part of the world that I inhabited. But these, you know, square-jawed men with trilbies in mean streets. I mean, it was a long way from Wiltshire. Well, this is your Ted Heath-ism, isn't it? Ted Heath would agree with you. He would see you as a great, you know, when he was taking Britain into Europe,

you as a fellow Wiltshire enthusiast. But think the other reason why the other and this kind of opens up that maybe the next stage I'll just say this before we go to the break is that um rather like I never took James Bond seriously because I grew up with um Roger Moore as James Bond so also basically my introduction to superheroes was um Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin, which was played almost entirely for laughs. Completely for laughs. So, you know, the bat shark repellent gas. The pow-wam kind of stuff that appears on screen. Yes, exactly.

And the villains. So Vincent Price's egghead. There was the professor who kept turning into Tutankhamen. I love that. There was Cesar Romero as the Joker who refused to shave his moustache. So they've painted over it, haven't they? They've just painted over it. And I was watching some of the footage.

I hadn't thought about it for years and years, but it was still held up. A routine question. Have you recently sold any war surplus submarines? And if so, to whom? And it's actually, it's Leslie Nielsen. It's the naked gun. Yeah, I can see that.

And I think, you know, it's, that's basically why I've never been able to take it seriously. Well, let's hope you take it serious in the second half because we will, of course, be coming to your own favourite super hero. Ah, yes, Spider-Man. Spideidey we'll see you after the break i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. So Dominic, before we get back to superheroes, it is time to talk about UnHerd, our favourite online magazine. Yes. And regular listeners will remember that a couple of weeks ago you were talking about an article that you had in the works and I asked you to say what it was and you were being very coy about it.

I didn't want to tell you. Well, it's now come out, hasn't it? And what was it about? It was all about, so it's the 20th anniversary of the release of The Fellowship of the Ring the first Gerard Tolkien Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings

Peter Jackson film and who then went on to do better things Peter Jackson get back it's not better than the Lord of the Rings

it's very similar are you mad are you mad group of friends overcoming terrible odds tribulation to achieve great things

yeah so it's 20th anniversary of the Lord of the Rings and they said do you have anything to say about the Lord of the Rings films danger and tribulation to achieve great things. Yeah, so it's the 20th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings and they said, do you have anything to say about The Lord of the Rings films or the Lord, well really the Tolkien phenomenon. And I always have things to say about Tolkien, as you know. And the people at UnHerd were very kind enough to indulge me. But you're

cross because you think I didn't mention I didn't want to come onto your turf. I didn't mention Christianity. I wasn't cross. I thought it was a wonderful essay, as I'd expect, because you're always wonderful on Tolkien. I just felt that if you're talking about Tolkien's inspirations, you might have mentioned Christianity. But that's something for maybe a future episode for us, A future article for you. Yeah. Anyway, on the topic of Christianity, UnHerd are launching a Christmas special offer to celebrate.

Oh, that's nice. The birth of the baby Jesus. So that's great. So it could be a present for somebody. So you can gift UnHerd membership to a friend or family member for Christmas. I can't believe you used the word gift as a verb. I just did, didn't I? Yeah.

Do you do that normally? I started doing it in the London Olympics, where people podiumed and meddled. Oh, meddling. You're very into verbing. Yeah, verbing. Anyway, you're distracting me from what I meant to be reading, which is, if you know someone who could do with confronting some different perspectives, do you, Dominic?

Do you know someone who could do with confronting some different perspectives? Yeah, I do. Actually, I know loads of people. Well, in that case, unheard membership could be for them. It says they could benefit from questioning some of their certainties. Yes. Yeah, I do. I know a lot of people like that. All academics. That's your Christmas gift with with sorted then yeah and there's a special offer which brings an annual subscription down 10 pounds to only 39 pounds and there's an unheard bag with this fabulous label on it immune to herd

mentality yeah it's again it's again it's that double-edged thing though isn't it because if too many people carry that bag i know imagine they might look like it imagine like a herd that's what worries me i'm always worried with unheard whether somebody will set up a rival website called herd if unheard becomes become too successful but clearly we're not at that stage yet i mean people should definitely visit unheard.com to find out more but do so quickly before the herd arrive. Yeah. Okay. And now back to superheroes. The most popular Marvel hero is much lower on the social scale. He is the maladjusted adolescent Spider-Man, the only overtly neurotic superhero I've ever come across. Spider-Man has a terrible

identity problem, a marked inferiority complex and a fear of women. He's antisocial, castration ridden, wracked with Oedipal guilt and accident prone. How can a character as healthy as Superman compete with this living symbol of the modern dilemma, this neurotics neurotic spider-man the super anti-hero of our time now tom that was the village voice in 1965 do you want to stand up for your alter ego i i i hadn't realized it i i hadn't realized that that's who i was it's just uncanny it's eerie the stuff about castration, for example. I mean, the number of times you brought that up on the podcast and the Village Voice were on your case.

Yeah, that's amazing. Although, as someone said, I mean, Peter Parker was also, he was chairman of British Rail, wasn't he, in the 70s? He was. Went out with Shirley Williams. Shirley Williams had a crush on Peter Parker when they were at Oxford. So, yes. So we're now coming.

So the stuff that we're talking about in the first half is known by comic book enthusiasts as the golden age of comics. I thought it was also the silver age. No. No, I think this is the. According to Grant Morrison, the golden age is the Second World War. Yeah. We're about to talk about the Silver Age. And then the Silver Age is the 1950s.

So what's Spider-Man? When Superman was drawn by an artist called Wayne Boring. I knew you wanted to mention Wayne Boring. Yeah, I did. I think the Silver Age goes into the 60s. So that's where you get the second... It's like debates over the Renaissance, isn't it?

When does it begin? When does it end? The crazy rabbit holes. The long 19th century. I've spent hours on the internet just getting deeper and deeper. It totally has my depth on the difference. So there's two different Captain Marvels, one belonging to DC and one to Marvel, very confusingly. So tell me about DC and Marvel.

I don't understand this. So they're just rival companies. It's very simple. And they're rival companies, So they're just rival companies. It's very simple. And they're rival companies, and they're both associated with slightly different eras. So they've always had different names. So DC is the classic ones. So DC is Batman, Superman, and so on. Marvel's heyday comes in the so-called Silver Age.

And they have Stan Lee, and a guy called called Jack Kirby and a guy called Steve Ditko. Again, all of them, you know, we've got Jewish backgrounds, dual identities, New York, based in New York. And this is the one that's a coherent world. Yes. And what they do, which is brilliant, is that they, unlike DC,

realise that they have to adjust to a new, a completely new kind of generational tone in the early 1960s. They do it first with a team called the Fantastic Four. My son absolutely adores the Fantastic Four. The Fantastic Four starts in 1961. Mr Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch and the Thing. And they're a kind of family group. It's very space age, unlike...

So the earlier ones, Batman and so on, feel very 1930s. These guys are astronauts. They are fighting the communists. They want to get into space. And this is against the backdrop of Kennedy, space race. Exactly. Because in the early ones, scientists are kind of villains. Yeah.

And they're always... Whereas now, almost all the Marvel heroes of the 60s, science has gone wrong in some way, but science is also their friend and their weapon. And actually, the US State Department supposedly had said to publishers, we want you to push science, we want you to embrace science, because they obviously mattered in the context of the technological competition with the Sovietviet union and so spider-man gets bitten by a radioactive spider right exactly i know i know this from so the fantastic are terribly successful and they're this scientific

and they're and they also bicker among themselves they're a sort of realist not realistic but you know what i mean they're slightly more naturalistic kind of family group. Now, Spider-Man takes Peter Parker, who would normally have been a sidekick by Robin, and it places him centre stage with no mentor. So he's a teenager. It's the first one where the teenager... But isn't his mentor... What's his name?

Uncle Ben. No. The guy who dresses up in metal. Iron Man. Iron Man. The guy who dresses up in metal. Iron Man. Iron Man. Dresses up in metal. It's like listening to my dad describing Star Wars. I know, I know, I know.

Implausible. There are two metal men. Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. He is in the films, but I don't think he is in the comic books. Is he not? At least not early on, in the first. But one of the interesting details I enjoyed reading in Grant Morrison's book was that Peter Parker apparently designed his Spider-Man outfit to look good on the Ed Sullivan show.

Yeah. Which is what the Beatles then appeared on. Of course. So spiders, Beatles. So Peter Parker is very much rooted in the world of the 1960s. He's at high school. Later on, when he goes to university, some of his classmates are involved in demos and student protests and things.

So that's why it matters that the other Tom Holland looks young. It has to look young. You can't have an older Tom Holland. But the other ones didn't, did they? They did. Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield. They were a tiny bit older. Tom Holland's probably the youngest.

Tom Holland, I mean, you are Tom Holland. He's probably the youngest. And the most firmly rooted in that kind of high school stuff. And, of course, you know who says with great power comes with great responsibility, Tom? Spider-Man. No. Don't know. Nobody says it. Don't they?

The line is actually, with great power. There must also come great responsibility. My son was very keen that I point this out on the podcast. Okay. And actually it's Stan Lee who says it. It's the narrator. Stan Lee, the head of Marvel comics, Stanley,

just give them a lot of action and don't use too many words. Yeah. So they're quite kinetic. They're, they're sort of updated for the sixties. Okay. But convince me that this is of any interest at all from a historical point of view i mean it's all very interesting yes whatever but so what

um i think it i think it's a huge part of american popular culture in the 1960s it obviously so what's it telling us about america what's it what's what's it revealing what's it what mirror is it showing up to the cultural neuroses of the age? I think what it is is that Spider-Man and Spider-Man and similar comics, they wrestle with kind of social issues of the 60s and later in the 70s. So, for example, there's a character called Green Lantern. In 1970, they have issues all about drugs, all about the war on drugs and so on and drug addiction and things.

And you get Black Panther. Now, even you with your sort of… Wankada, is that right? Yeah. Wakonda. I think Wakonda. I don't think it's called Wankada. No, it's not.

It can't be called Wankada. Even you with your imperviousness to the fear of cancellation, you're not going to slag off Black Panther because Black Panther… I don't know anything about it. I don't know anything about it. A sort of touchstone for diversity in Hollywood. People are very excited about Black Panther, but Black Panther was started in 1966

and he's the first kind of really successful black superhero. And which came first, the Black Panthers or Black Panther? That's a really good question. So were the Black Panthers naming themselves after a superhero? I don't know.

Maybe listeners, people should go onto the Discord chat and tell us. No, I think you should look it up on Wikipedia right now. Right. Live research. Live research. Okay, fine. Because I'll be honest, if the Black Panthers named themselves after a comic book. Then it will matter.

Well, I'm going to think less of them. God, there's so much tension riding on this. Origins. But then if Black Panther is named after the Black Panthers, then that's kind of quite edgy. So they named themselves in October 1966. They adopt the Black Panther logo in their own organisation. Black uniforms and all that stuff.

And when does the comic start? The tension, Tom. It's massive. This is so exciting. Have we done research live? Live research. July 1966, Black Panther comes first. The character.

Then I think, well. So I've been utterly vindicated. Tom now recognises that comic books do matter enormously. Yes, I do. Yeah. I don't know whether they knew of the comic, though. Were they reading the comics? It seems a bit of a coincidence.

Yeah. Well, anyway, Black Panther now really matters. I mean, Black Panther is seen as probably more than anything that Hollywood has done in the last 10 or 20 years. As an embodiment of its newfound kind of progressiveness. So when the Black Panther film came out, it was nominated for Oscars and stuff, and it's absolutely seen as emblematic

of a kind of new multiracial kind of popular culture. So there you go. And also, Tom, actually, talking about comic books and superheroes as a mirror, they absolutely are a mirror. Because in the 30s and 40s, you have Superman. I know they are. That's what I was saying. I was trying to get you back on track.

You have Superman-type heroes. In the 60s, you have teenagers. Then in the 70s, they turn inwards, and a lot of characters start getting killed off. And then in the 80s, you have this whole new kind of wave so so Tim Burton the Tim Burton film no before that before that before that so what's happening in the 80s so there's a guy called Frank Miller who you will know because of oh I do know Frank Miller yes so the Dark Knight Returns the Dark Knight Returns and now you have an older Batman it's much more aggressive it is much I mean Frank Miller is kind of a libertarian, isn't he?

Very conservative. It's much more incredibly violent. And The Dark Knight Returns, and you must like this, is an America where Reagan is about 120. Yes, exactly, where Reagan is president. And the same thing in

Watchmen, which I'm sure we'll come to in a minute, where Nixon is still in power. Yes. So there's a kind of weird thing going on, weird thing going on where Republican presidents never retire. So what's going on there? Yeah, it's a sort of paranoid imagination of comic book writers. Comic book writers tend not to be, you know, sort of centrists.

Steady as she goes, establishment centrists. They tend to be on the kind of i you would say the ideological fringes of the left or right frank miller on one side alan moore the great british comic writer he's british because quite a lot of these kind of edgy reworkings of american standards have kind of they're coming from british art schools right absolutely absolutely so alan moore who's from northampton he writes this absolutely classic comic book called Watchmen, listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best books of the 20th century. I've seen the film.

I had no idea what was going on. The comic book is absolutely fantastic if you like comic books. And actually, there's a TV series that came out two years ago that won tons and tons of Emmys and was absolutely brilliant. So the comic book is basically saying, slightly what if superheroes were real and what if they had carried on living? And they helped America to win the Vietnam War. Yeah.

What would it be like to be a costumed vigilante, maybe with or without powers? And actually it also picks up because it has a superhero who basically becomes God. He goes and lives on Mars. He has the power of life and God. He goes and lives on Mars. He has the power of life and death. He can kind of remake reality. But it's not as good as Kick-Ass.

I haven't seen Kick-Ass. Kick-Ass is great. Kick-Ass is about a comic book fan who dresses up as a superhero. But then what the TV series Watchmen does, which I think is really interesting, and again a very good mirror. So that came out about two years ago and that took the watchmen story a level further because it's it set it against the backdrop partly of the tulsa race massacre in 1921 this great sort of terrible moment well they kind of aerial attack isn't it

supposedly aerial attacks on a black quarter of tulsa then the most thriving black city in america and um and what the watchman tv series does is it points out the sort of similarity i mean masked vigilantes that's what the ku klux klan are they're masked vigilantes right um so i'm right so it is a right-wing fantasy well i mean that is what the that series kind of plays with is that are they on the side of the poor and of justice and all that sort of stuff? Or are they kind of fascistic, which is also what you see in the Christopher Nolan Batman films. Yeah.

The Batman figure. So in the final film of the Christopher Nolan Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises, I think. That's the one with Heath Ledger. No, that's the middle one. So it's the one with Tom Hardy. Oh, where you can't hear a word he says. From his mask.

Yes. I am Gotham's reckoning. All that kind of stuff. So in that film, there are sort of Tale of Two Cities quotations and stuff like that. There's a revolution in Gotham that Bane causes. And Batman is basically fighting on behalf of the forces of order, the establishment, the rich. Because he's rich, of course, himself.

That's Bruce Wayne. So that's sort of having some fun, I think, with the politics of it. But actually, what's really interesting is that, I think we've talked about this before with Bond, how in the 21st century, you just can't do unironic, un-self-conscious, heroic superheroes anymore. They have to be conflicted. There has to be a traumatic backstory.

Okay, so why is that, do we think? Well, I think because obviously one of the things that intervene, so we've got a question here from Sam Burrows. In the wake of 9-11, recessions and pandemics, do you think the current obsession with superheroes is actually a product of nostalgia, a longing for a time

in which things felt good? Presumably, if you're saying it's impossible to have ironic, unironic superheroes anymore, that's not the case. I don't know. Are the Marvel films nostalgia? I don't know because they're appealing

to people who are younger than us. So what are they nostalgic for? My son who is 10 in a few days, he and his friends all love the Marvel films but they don't like them out of nostalgia. I mean they have no interest in me nostalgia. The X-Men films that I saw because my daughter got very into them briefly

were based around the Bay of Pigs episode. Sorry, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And then there was one about an attempt to stop the Vietnam War. So that probably was nostalgic. Very rooted in, and it involved Wolverine going back in time. See, I think there's a general retreat from heroism, isn't there?

And if you were writing an essay about it for UnHerd, I would sort of... Oh, going against the herd mentality. Exactly. I might well say that it was a sort of loss of faith in the West. I mean, is that too... Well, I agree because you see the same thing with Westerns, which seem to me very analogous. Yeah.

That it's about good guys cleaning up, sorting out the baddies. But you can't have an unironic western now no i mean in all these and you've talked about um uh black panther i mean is it not also tied up with uh anxieties about white privilege of whom i guess bruce wayne would bruce wayne would be the absolute embodiment so i'm interesting because there's a robert patterson version of batman that's coming out that looks very, from the trailer, look incredibly dark. And actually that's been the trend

since the Dark Knight returns, Frank Miller stuff, so that Batman becomes more and more of a villain. I mean, there's that scene that you almost always get, you got it in the last Bond film, you get it in everything now. We're not so different, you and I. You know, the villain talking to the hero. And you're like, oh, that's very profound.

They're two sides of the same coin. But you see that. Wouldn't it be great to see, you know, the Adam West style? Pow! Zam! Yeah. And the hero saying, actually, we're very different. You're a villain.

I'm taking you in. Exactly. Commissioner Gordon, cuff him. Yeah. Yeah. I think there'd be a market for that. Well, I think that's probably the way to go, isn't it? I'm taking you in exactly Commissioner Gordon cuff him yeah yeah I think there'll be a market for that well I think that's

probably the way to go isn't it when I set up my studio that's what I'll do there will be some sort of generational backlash and there'll be a

as there was in the 70s with the creation of Star Wars and the demand for kind of a clearer line between good and evil don't you think that'll come eventually

we'd have to say stay immersed in kind of cynicism forever. Or do we? I don't know. Cynicism man. Yeah, that's your power. Cynicism man. Multiple people actually have asked us this question.

Which superhero do we suit best? Stephen Clarke, for example. So Tom, if you were a superhero, who would you be? I'd probably be the deacon. You'd be the deacon? Or maybe, for example. So, Tom, if you were a superhero, who would you be? I'd probably be the deacon. You'd be the deacon? Or maybe the sportsmaster. Yeah, because you're cricketing. I'm a cricket bat. I just hurl.

Who do you think I would be? I think you'd be... Would you be the Incredible Hulk? Yeah, I do spend a lot of time getting angry. And I do go green when roused. So maybe i'll take it yeah no i think i think i mean obviously i'd be thor would you why brawny good looking you're great with a hammer i i'm tempted to do my impersonation of anthony hopkins throwing you out of hasgard, but I won't.

I have no idea what you're talking about. No, you don't. Right. Have I convinced you that superheroes matter, that they're historically interesting? Yeah. I mean, I think so, until you slightly went off-piste in the 60s.

And I don't think they really matter now. Well, that wasn't off-piste. I think their emergence, the early stuff, I think that's interesting. Yeah. You don't think the 60s stuff is interesting? Not particularly, no. Shocking. No, I don't.

I think when people... We did a whole episode about teenagers, and Peter Parker is nothing if not a teenager. He's a teenager from the kind of... Yeah, but say what? I mean, it's like the monkeys. Would we do an episode on the monkeys? I mean, it's basically the monkeys, isn't it? I suppose it is a bit, but I mean, we did an episode on the beakers I mean, it's basically the monkeys, isn't it? I suppose it is a bit. But I mean, we did an episode on beakers.

It's the monkeys in a kind of weird suit. Yeah. All right. Well. But one final question, which is, I think another reason why I'm quite actively hostile to the whole thing. Yeah. Is that I feel bullied by. People wishing you a happy birthday on Twitter.

No, it's not that. Under the impression that you're 17. I feel bullied by the kind of juggernaut quality of this essentially special effects driven... I mean, the ones that I've seen...

I'm with Ridley Scott and... Martin Scorsese. Martin Scorsese. I think they're stupid and dumb and pointless. I think that's too harsh. I think they are. But I'm aware, but I'm 53. They're not in you, yeah.

And I was never interested in the first place. So I'd be interested in your view on, I mean, they do seem to me expressive of a kind of new era of American cultural supremacy. So they seem to me the cinematic equivalent of the dominance of Google and Apple and these vast, colossal edifices before which everyone else are just kind of tiny little ants, spiders, dare I say. I think there's a lot of truth in that.

I think they have sucked. I think they're extremely well made and they're very effective. I've actually never seen one without falling asleep because I find the narrative so formulaic that I actually find them quite boring. But I can't help noticing that all the nine and ten year olds, particularly boys

are my acquaintance. I love them. The one thing I will say is I think the air is seeping out of that balloon because I think their box office returns have been dwindling a little bit in the last couple of years. Trounced by James Bond, I gather. Yeah, well, I mean, yeah. Although it'd be interesting to see how Spider-Man does.

I hate my name. Are you going to go and see it? I'm not, no. So Tom Holland is doing something else now, which is gutting for you, isn't he? He's doing Fred Astaire. He's a great dancer. You must have seen him

do the famous thing where he is Fred Astaire and then he turns into Rihanna. You must have seen that. No, what is that? Oh, it's brilliant. It's how he announced himself when he got named as Spider-Man before the first Spider-Man film came out he went on this kind of dance-a-thon where you have to you know dance to well-known music yeah he first he comes on and he's fred astaire and he's got the umbrella and uh it's raining and then he goes off and he comes back

on he's dressed as rihanna and he does um umbrella it's absolutely brilliant if you haven on, he's dressed as Rihanna, and he does Umbrella. It's absolutely brilliant, if you haven't seen it. He's dressed as Rihanna? Yeah. Isn't that quite risky now? I mean, cultural appropriation and all that kind of stuff. No, he's non-binary. Is he? He's not.

You've made that up. He's two spirits. Well, it's... Two spirits. He's making play with gender stereotypes. Is he? Right. You heard it here first from Tom Holland himself.

That's what it's all about. And on that bombshell. He's obviously paying homage to Madame Fatale. Of course he was. The retired actor who fights crime disguised as an old lady. It's goodbye from me, the Incredible Hulk, and it's goodbye from him, the sportsman, and we will see you next time.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.