by: Ricardo A. Serrano Denis
When the Twin Towers fell on September 11th, 2001, Superman was nowhere to be found. Spider Man’s senses failed to tingle, the Fantastic Four explored other dimensions, and Captain America was too invested, perhaps, in other threats more immediate and less secretive than the one that descended upon New York on that day. The Hulk had no other option than to get angry after the fact. The case could weigh more profoundly on Spider Man given his actual residency in the city, being that Superman lives in the fictional city of Metropolis (evident though it may be that said city was originally modeled after Manhattan in both scope and character to the point of it being labeled in the comics themselves as “The Big Apricot”). And yet, the fact still remained that neither one of them could even conceive such a likelihood so as to later explain the attack in fictional form.
Writing for SF Weekly, Robert Wilonsky noted perceptively that, “In a post-Sept 11 world, even the phrase, ‘Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!’ sounds different; its awe has been replaced by shock and repulsion” (see Comic Book Nation by Bradford Wright). Comic books as an expression in escapism could no longer be recognized as such when the comic book world itself had to explain the absence of the Twin Towers and why their heroes were incapable of stopping the terrorist attacks when they had been able to fend off countless other threats more intense and dangerous in scope when contrasted with the reality of the the comic world. Battling Galactus, the giant world-eating alien, pales in comparison to two planes that should’ve been easily swatted from the sky by a single superhero, much less by a group of them such as the Avengers or the Justice League, each with their own god-like heroes any one of which could’ve single-handedly stopped the attacks. But that quite simply did not happen.
In their absence, the public chose to confide their expected heroics to real men and women who served as firemen, police officers, congressmen, senators, vice presidents and presidents. Men and women that actually existed. This still didn’t ease the pain of explaining the attacks within the logic of a superhero world. The immediate comic book response was Heroes by Marvel Comics. Published in December 2001, Heroes was particularly interesting in its effort to unite icons old and new—or rather, in its ambition to establish new icons while simultaneously reintroducing old ones, as writer Stefanie Diekmann states in the Guardian article “Hero and Superhero.” Many of Marvel's famous characters, such as Spider Man, the Silver Surfer and Captain America, were resurrected and represented alongside the ‘protagonists’ of 9/11: firemen, police officers and other rescue workers immortalized visually as covered in the black dust of the broken towers.
The front page of Heroes is subtitled: “The world's greatest superhero creators honor the world's greatest heroes.” The idea within the book is that fiction should bow to reality in the immediate aftermath of an event so catastrophic in proportions so as to actually establish an historic time-frame or era (remember, American life after the attacks is now considered as the post-9/11 era). DC Comics followed in releasing 9/11: The Worlds’s Finest Comics Book Writers & Artists Tell Stories to Remember with short stories and single page artwork by the industry’s top talents. The book’s cover sees an Alex Ross drawn Superman standing before a mural littered with policemen, firefighters, nurses, and rescue workers. Above and to the left of Superman is a small word balloon saying “Wow.” Again, fiction recognizing reality’s place in the aftermath, or not intentionally seeking a spotlight it can’t honestly and sincerely fill at the moment.
This passing of the baton, if only for a moment, is interesting if not a bit deceptive. Superheroes do recognize true heroics in the men and women of 9/11, but they do so with an authority bestowed upon them by readers that accept their judgment as sound in recognizing heroics in other people. In other words, they seem to be grading the true protagonists of 9/11 by superhero standards, the same ones expected by comic book readers. If such is the case, the superhero’s lament is one of not being real enough to save the day. But their saving grace is being able to guide the coronation of everyday rescue workers, policemen, nurses, and firemen as real-life superheroes.
Perhaps one of the most striking expressions of the superhero’s lament is found in Amazing Spider Man #36, released October 31st, 2001. Within the opening pages of the comic book we see Spider Man almost lost in the color of fire and explosions of the collapsed towers saying, ever so subtly in tone, “God.” His only expression amidst the unknowable in a single word, collecting public sentiment and becoming one with New York in a day where all shared the same feeling, calling to the same being. “God.” The pages pass and we come to New Yorkers fleeing from the destruction, looking at Spider Man, and asking: “Where were you? How could you let this happen?” Spider Man’s only response, in the form of narration and not dialogue, is: “How do you say we didn’t know? We couldn’t know. We couldn’t imagine.” The lament of the superhero, best expressed in this Spider Man issue, rests on 9/11 laying bare the limits of fiction in its wake. When the unimaginable happens, one cannot expect the imagined to act on our behalf. In the wake of 9/11 it was up to superheroes to recognize heroics in the men and women of the real world. It wasn’t up to superheroes, at that moment, to save the day but to comfort loss and let real men and women don the capes of heroes, if only for a short while.
