The Naked Hero and Model Man: Costumed Identity in Comic Book Narratives

Comic book superheroes often display dual identities, which they dress in contrasting ways. Wearing an identifying costume, they are superheroes, fighting evil and saving the world; out of costume, and wearing instead their civilian identity, they try to live a normal life. Clothes, then, make them a ‘man’ (and it is male superheroes who are the focus of this paper), but it is only in costume that the man can be ‘super’ or ‘spider’ or ‘bat’. The comic book hero, colourfully costumed, but to all intents and purposes visually naked, displays his power and sense of invulnerability, while at the same time hiding the secret identity which is his greatest weakness, because it means a world where the hero is as powerless as his innocent family and friends. For the sake of those he loves, therefore, the comic book hero ironically removes himself from the familial, communal, and even legal worlds he has sworn to protect. The effect of this is to preserve for the, predominantly male, reader the stereotypical and simplified power fantasies so often fostered by superhero stories, where any failings or shortcomings in the domestic sphere are compensated for in a secret world of heroic achievement, despite the fact that the defining qualities of the hero’s costumed world, the secrecy, subterfuge, violence, and intimidation, are at odds with, if not a betrayal of, the values of his home-life.

This essay will examine why a man cannot be a hero to the one he loves. It will analyse the traditional arguments for hiding a life of heroism from family, as put forward in books like Spider-Man and Daredevil, and compare these with the domesticated hero of Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. Animal Man, who is more comfortably Buddy Baker, is presented from the first issue as a family man who also happens to have super-powers; “Buddy, I don’t know what makes you think you’re a super-hero! You paid 800 dollars for those Animal Man costumes and they’ve only been out of the closet a half-dozen times in eight years!” Buddy is so defined by his home-life that his style of domesticated superheroism is characterised both by the strengths gained by a family man, such as love and support, and by the supposed weaknesses of a regular man, such as doubts and insecurities; “I refuse to be set up as a role model! . . . I’m just a man and I make mistakes like anyone else! And just because I wear a costume doesn’t mean I always have to be right!” When his wife and children are killed in retaliation for his actions as a superhero, however, a grieving Buddy sets out on a quest to get them back, only to come face-to-face with his writer, Morrison, who explains to him the reality of his situation, “All stories need drama and it’s easy to get a cheap emotional shock by killing popular characters.” Outlining where the next writer might take Animal Man’s life (“They might play it safe and write you as a straight action superhero who fights animal-inspired villains every issue”), Morrison reveals the conventional limitations on the comic book hero’s costumed identity, and suggests that there is not yet a place in comics for a hero as domesticated as this Animal Man, husband, father, animal-rights activist, and hero.