X-Bodies

American Dreams of Mutants: The X‐Men—“Pulp” Fiction, Science Fiction, and Superheroes

“…Mordecai Richler observes that the golden age superheroes had constituted “invulnerable, all‐conquering” champions for children, providing “revenge figures against what seemed a gratuitously cruel adult world” (306, 300). The relevance of these superheroes for children was epitomized by a young Billy Batson who, upon uttering the magic word “SHAZAM” (an acronym of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury), was transformed into the world's mightiest mature mortal, Captain Marvel ( Whiz Comics #2: February 1940), “an allegory of pubescent metamorphosis,” alleges Bukatman (“X‐bodies” 100). Such golden age superheroes “were always adults, except when followed by a xeroxed sidekick” (McCue 41); Batman was followed by Robin ( Detective Comics #38: April 1940) and The Human Torch by Toro ( The Human Torch Comic #2: Fall 1940).…”

“…The Torch was an impulsive, literally hot‐headed high school student with a penchant for hot‐rods. The wise‐cracking Spider‐Man, whose superhuman powers were acquired by the bite of a radioactive spider while visiting a science exhibition, was a high school bookworm who, Bukatman observes, had a certain “nerdy charm” (“X‐bodies” 95) and lived with his widowed aunt. There was a mutual antagonism between the silver age Human Torch and Spider‐Man, begun when Spider‐Man crashed a party held by the Human Torch's girlfriend ( The Amazing Spider‐Man #8: January 1964).…”

“…The debuts of Superman and Batman, the more successful and enduring superheroes, were followed by those of The Human Torch and Namor the Sub‐mariner ( Marvel Comics #1: October/November 1939) to establish a “golden age” of comics. These superhero stories—produced, Bukatman alleges, “largely by young males for somewhat younger males” (“X‐bodies” 95)—have been considered to be science fiction albeit, as James contends, “shorn of all sophistication” ( Science Fiction 83). But these stories are more properly fantasies; the superheroes retained the mysticism of their pulp predecessors (Lang and Trimble 165) and, although set in plausible worlds where even “the irrational or the strange is still explicable in quasi‐scientific or everyday terms” (Abercrombie, Lash, and Longhurst 123), superhero stories used science as “an alibi for magic” (Reynolds 53).…”