Avengers and Philosophy: Earth's Mightiest Thinkers, The (9 page)

^9.
He sometimes uses both shrinking and growing abilities in succession, such as on the recent
Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
cartoon series. Here he wears the Ant-Man costume and goes by this name, but he also grows large at times, causing some to refer to him as Ant-Man/Giant-Man. What should we say in this case? At the moment, it seems that Pym is quickly changing from Ant-Man to Giant-Man and back again, too quickly to make a costume change practical. Eventually, if he keeps this up, we should expect him to shed both personas and adopt a new one, consistent with the abilities to both shrink and grow as part of one persona. (He is a genius, after all.)

^10.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #29 (June 1966), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 2
.

^11.
Avengers
, vol. 1, #64 (May 1969), reprinted in
Essential Avengers Vol. 3
; for more on Clint Barton’s identity crisis, see the chapter by Mark D. White titled “The Way of the Arrow: Hawkeye Meets the Taoist Masters” in this volume.

^12.
It also seems significant that it is Pym, the person who created the Goliath superhero, who explicitly endorses Barton as being the new Goliath, lending Barton the legitimacy needed to make the transfer successful.

^13.
I owe many thanks for useful discussions and comments during the writing of this paper to philosophers Roy T. Cook, Peter W. Hanks, Ian Stoner, and Jason Swartwood, and to superhero fans Brandon Bueling, Casey Garske, Sandra Marble, and Matt Nelson.

Chapter 5

I AM MADE OF INK: SHE-HULK AND METACOMICS

Roy T. Cook

Jennifer Walters, also known as the Sensational (formerly Savage) She-Hulk, is a lawyer, bounty hunter, actress, Avenger, and former member of the Fantastic Four. Jen is one of Marvel Comics’ premier superheroines, and better yet, she knows it.

But wait: what is it, exactly, that Jen knows? It isn’t merely that she is the most prominent and possibly most powerful female superhero in the (fictional) world that she shares with Spider-Man, Captain America, and her cousin the Incredible Hulk. In addition, Jen
knows
that she is a character in a comic book, and she is able to take advantage of this knowledge in surprising ways. Simply put, Jen is the star of a
metacomic.
By exploring this interesting “superpower” of Jen’s, we’ll see what her self-awareness says about the nature of comics themselves.

What Is a Metacomic?

To understand the term
metacomics
, it helps to begin at the beginning. Within philosophy, “meta” has at least two distinct but interconnected meanings. The simpler of the two—which sticks rather closely to the original Greek meaning of the term—simply means “beyond” or “about.” For example,
metaphysics
involves theorizing about the fundamental nature of reality, a kind of theorizing that goes beyond physics and the other sciences.
Metaethics
involves theorizing about the nature of ethical judgments and ethical practices, rather than merely acting ethically or making particular ethical choices. The term
metahuman
, used to describe characters in comic books who have powers beyond those of ordinary mortals, also falls into this category.

There is another, more specialized use of “meta,” however. When it’s applied to some term
X
, it roughly means “
X
about
X
.” Thus
metadata
are data about data,
metamathematics
is the mathematical study of mathematical systems themselves, and a
metalanguage
is a language used to describe and study other languages. Likewise, a metacomic is a comic that is, in one sense or another, about comics. A metacomic is a type of
metafiction
, which contemporary literary critic Patricia Waugh describes as any “fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality.”
¹
Thus a metacomic is any comic that draws attention to some aspect of itself or its creation, where this “meta” aspect of the story is intended not only to propel the story but also to force the reader to think about or question the nature of storytelling itself.

One simple way to turn a comic into a metacomic is to make the protagonist aware that he or she is a character in a comic. This sort of self-awareness is often displayed by “breaking the fourth wall,” where the metafictionally self-aware character speaks directly to the audience or to the writers, artists, and editors. In John Byrne’s run on
The Sensational She-Hulk
, and (more subtly) in Dan Slott’s run on the more recent
She-Hulk
, Jen possesses this sort of self-awareness. Self-aware fourth-wall-breaking does not make Jen unique, though, even among characters in the Marvel Universe. Mutant assassin Deadpool also speaks directly to the audience and is aware that he is a character in a comic book.
²
Jen’s abilities are not limited merely to awareness of herself as a fictional character, however. In addition, she is able to use this knowledge to manipulate the comic book world in unique ways.

Why should metafictionally aware Avengers be of interest to philosophers?
Aesthetics
, the philosophical study of the nature of art, has shifted recently from a focus on general questions about art in general
³
to an approach that focuses on the individual arts themselves, including an emphasis on the differences between one art form and another.
⁴
As a result, it is not surprising that philosophers and other scholars have begun to think about comics and metacomics.
⁵

In comparison with most other art forms, comics seem particularly saturated with conventional elements. Thought and speech balloons, textual sound effects, motion lines, and panel borders are all conventional devices that facilitate the representation of sound, motion, time, and space in an artistic medium that consists of silent, static images printed on a two-dimensional page. The better we understand these conventional aspects of comic book storytelling, the better we will be able to appreciate and understand the comics we are reading. The study of metacomics promises to be an extremely valuable tool in this endeavor. After all, what better way to understand how these storytelling conventions function than to see what happens when they are bent, broken, or subverted by the Sensational She-Hulk!

Your Cover Is Blown, Jen

The metafictional madness of John Byrne’s run on
The Sensational She-Hulk
begins on the cover of issue #1 (May 1989), which depicts Jen holding a handful of X-Men comics and saying to the comic-shop customer, “Okay, now. This is your second chance. If you don’t buy my book this time I’m gonna come to your house and rip up all of your X-Men.”
⁶
Jen is aware that she is the main character of this comic, and is breaking the fourth wall to convince the hesitant buyer to purchase her book. She is also, however, cleverly referring to well-known facts about the comic book industry within the real—that is,
our
—world. She is somehow aware that her previous series,
The Savage She-Hulk
, did not sell well while at the same time X-Men-related comics sold in record numbers. This shows that Jen is not only aware of what happens in her world, but is also quite aware of what happens in ours!

Covers often stray from the literal contents of the comic they enclose, however. Thus if this cover were the only instance of metafictional content in
The Sensational She-Hulk
, it would perhaps not be all that noteworthy. But we don’t have to wait long for metafictional content to appear within the comic itself. For example, near the end of issue #1, Jen discovers that the Ringmaster and his Circus of Crime were hired to test the limits of her powers. She then complains, “Some anonymous bad guy is ready to spend three million bucks to find out how tough I am . . . and I know how these things work! It’ll be at least my third issue before I find out who it is! Although you readers will probably find out on the next page.” And of course we do!

The next two issues also contain metafictional content. On the cover of issue #2 (June 1989), Jen catches up on her cousin Bruce Banner’s life by reading issues of
The Incredible Hulk
, playing with the idea that within the Marvel Universe, comic books are historical records of actual events. More interesting, however, is an episode in issue #3 (July 1989), in which Jen regains consciousness after being attacked at the end of issue #2. She initially worries that she has been knocked out for a month, the normal length of time between issues of a monthly comic such as hers. Jen eventually reassures herself that this is not necessarily the case, however, based on the difference between the way time works within a comic (only days or even hours pass between issues) and the way it works in the real world. This knowledge, combined with the fact that her guest star Spider-Man has already appeared (which means that we are halfway into the present issue), allows her to conclude that less than a day has passed since she was knocked out. In short, Jen uses her knowledge of how time is portrayed within comics in order to draw conclusions about what happened while she was unconscious.

“There’s a Reader Out There Now!”

This is strange enough, but things get much weirder in issue #4 (August 1989). On page six, Jen has a job interview with the dreamy District Attorney Towers. After the interview, Jen mentions that she wasn’t expecting to meet her romantic interest so soon. At this point Towers’s assistant, Louise “Weezie” Mason, informs Jen that Towers is married. In the first panel of the next page, Jen asks, “Since when is he married??” and Weezie replies, “Since
now
I suppose. This
is
the first time it’s been mentioned.” Weezie’s response demonstrates that she, like Jen, is aware that she is a character in a comic, but it also reflects a deep insight into the way that truth works in fiction. Although Jen did not meet them, both Weezie and Towers appeared in issues #2 and #3 of the comic. Since Towers’s marital status is not mentioned in these earlier issues, at the time they were published there was no fact of the matter regarding whether he was married or not. After all, Byrne could have written a different version of issue #4 where Towers is single and begins a romance with Jen! Weezie is aware that her comments on the previous page made it the case that Towers is married. Further, Weezie presumably does not mean that Towers got married just this minute. Instead, he has been married all along, although the fact that he was married only becomes true (retroactively) as a result of the events in issue #4.

The metafictional weirdness continues in the second panel. Here, Jen shouts out, “What?!? Byrne!! What kind of game are you playing?!?” as she tries to climb out of the panel to physically assault Byrne. Weezie, restraining her, attempts to calm her with the words “Jen!! Control yourself! We’re inked and colored! Printed! There’s a reader out there now!” There are a number of interesting things going on here, including the continued metafictional self-awareness exhibited by both Weezie and Jen, and the fact that Jen addresses Byrne directly (we have to wait until issue #50 to see Byrne appear in a panel together with Jen, however). This panel also suggests that Jen can
see
Byrne. Normally, we treat panels as a sort of one-way window. We can look through these little rectangles in order to see events within Jen’s world, but comic book characters are not meant to be able to look back the other way and see us, much less climb through the panel to assault us!

The most interesting thing in this panel, however, is Weezie’s dialogue. Weezie is acknowledging that the printed nature of comics places Towers’s marital status not only out of Jen’s control but out of Byrne’s as well. By the time these events are happening, the comic has been printed, packaged, and purchased by the reader. It’s notable that the three things Weezie mentions explicitly—inking, coloring, and printing—are aspects of the creation of the comic that are not under Byrne’s direct control as writer and penciller. As a result, there is nothing any of them can do to change things—not even Byrne! Weezie is aware that, in a certain sense, she has no free will, and that her thoughts, statements, and actions for the remaining fifteen pages of issue #4 are already determined, since they are already inked, colored, and printed. Her future has already been laid out and is fixed permanently in ink.

Gutter-Hoppin’ and More Amazing Stories

Let’s consider the third and fourth panels of this page together, since they are in an important sense a single unit. In the third panel a confused Jen sputters, “But . . . but . . . but,” to which Weezie replies, “You’re obviously too distraught to go home just yet. C’mon . . . I’ll buy you lunch and we can talk.” Unlike the previous two panels, there is nothing out of the ordinary in the dialogue here. What is out of the ordinary, however, is how Weezie, dragging Jen along behind her, travels from her office in the third panel to the restaurant in the fourth panel. Weezie crosses this distance in one step, by stepping over the gutter between panels, her right foot touching the floor of the office and her left foot touching the floor of the restaurant. Obviously, the restaurant and the office are not located a mere two or three feet from each other within the fictional world that Jen and Weezie inhabit. But they are located mere fractions of an inch from each other on the page. Here, Weezie and Jen are able to take advantage of the fact that locations far removed from each other within their world are sometimes in close proximity on the page. As a result, it is quicker and more convenient for them to travel across the page than across town.

When Jen and Weezie violate comic book convention by stepping over the gutter, they force us to think about how the transition from one panel to the next operates in standard, non-“meta” comics. We normally make certain assumptions regarding the passage of time and distance when a character is depicted in two different locations in two adjacent panels—an assumption subverted by Weezie and Jen’s gutter-jumping mode of transportation. Jen and Weezie’s ability to treat the blank space between images as if it were a part of
their
world and not a part of
ours
highlights the critical role that panel transitions, and our assumptions about them, play in our understanding of comics.
⁷