When Congressman Robert Garcia (1977- ) was sworn into office in January 2023 on the US Constitution he didn’t have the Bible or any other sacred text with him. Not that it was required to have one. As per Article VI, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution, there is no official requirement to be sworn in on a religious text for the Oath of Office: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” But, in a sense, he did have a sacred text with him: a copy of Superman (vol. 1) #1 (published by National Comics/Dc Comics, cover date June 1939) borrowed from the Library of Congress, along with two other objects that were near and dear to him – his citizenship certificate and a photo of his parents who had died of Covid-19. As Garcia, the first LGBT Peruvian-American to be elected to Congress, told the CNN:
“I came to America at the age of 5 as a Spanish-speaker […]. As a kid, I would pick up comics at old thrift shops and pharmacies and that’s how I learned to read and write in English. [Superman represents] truth and justice, an immigrant that was different, was raised by good people that welcomed them. […] If you look at Superman values, and caucus values, it’s about justice, it’s about honesty, it’s doing the right thing, standing up for people that need support.” (Sottile 2023)
To all those who vociferously complained online that Garcia, a lifelong comic book reader and self-described “comic book nerd” on Twitter/X, should devote his time to more serious and less infantilising readings, the Congressman replied: “Anyone who understands comics knows that comics are an essential part of American fiction. And the lessons learned are invaluable” (Garcia’s tweet dated 14 November 2022). It is only fitting to note that in Superman #1 the titular character – called the “Champion of the Oppressed” – stops a mob lynching, incapacitates a wife-beater, and confronts greedy capitalists and warmongers (Fig. 1).
When Garcia was assimilating Superman’s moral code, on the other side of the pond a young comic book writer with a snarky countercultural attitude and a growing but already impressive body of work was ready to put into practice or, rather, subvert the invaluable lessons he learned while reading Superman as a kid. In an interview published in 2000, English novelist, playwright, thespian, songwriter, and comic book maestro Alan Moore (1953- ) stated wryly that reading Superman was instrumental in providing him with a moral compass:
“I got my morals more from Superman than I ever did from my teachers and peers […] Because Superman wasn’t real – he was incorruptible. You were seeing mortals in their pure form. You don’t see Superman secretly going out behind the back and lying and killing, which, of course, most real-life heroes tend to be doing” (Pappu 2000).
Moore is famous for his groundbreaking revisionist works like Watchmen (with Dave Gibbons, DC Comics, 1986-1987), where superheroes are deconstructed as complex characters acting in a more grounded and violent world, but he has long disavowed his work both for its unintended consequences (publishers started copying Moore’s mature approach reducing it to the ‘grim and gritty’ without any literary or intellectual substance) and for the conflictual relationship with publisher DC Comics insofar as creator rights were concerned. In fact, Moore atoned for the impact of his works on the industry by devoting years of his long career to the reconstruction of the superhero template in line with the ethical concerns of the Superman floppies of his youth: Supreme (with various artists, Image/Extreme/Awesome, 1996-1998), for instance, is a loving tribute to the silliness and pure, if naïve, morality of the Silver Age Superman, which doubles as perhaps the best Superman storyline from the early Noughties. It is not fortuitous that the cover of the first Supreme issue scripted by Moore is a homage to Superman #1 (Fig. 2).
Fig. 2. Variant covers for Supreme #41 (1996). Art by Joe Bennet (left) and Jerry Ordway (right) © Terrific Production. Source: Alan Moore’s Forgotten Awesome.
These two examples should be enough to show how important and transformative comic books can be in terms of personal identity and moral learning on an individual level when approached and read at a young age. But it is on the societal level that the humble floppy, originally mass-produced monthly out of cheap pulp for a quick buck, has managed to radically alter the Zeitgeist of modern society. From comic book franchises able to rake in billions of dollars at the box office, gargantuan comic book conventions where readers queue for days on end to have their floppies signed by their favourite authors, academic conferences devoted to the minutiae of fictive superhero multiverses, and black-and-white graphic novels included in the New York Times Best Sellers list, comic books are everywhere, to the point that, paraphrasing what Douglas Wolk aptly noted with regards to the success of Marvel Comics, a basic knowledge of the field is required to navigate our society “in much the same way as, say, being familiar with the Bible is useful for someone who lives in a Judeo-Christian society: [their] iconography and influence are pervasive” (Wolk 2021: 2).
It is thus quite surprising to learn that the superhero comic book as an object is currently facing the prospect of extinction. After having barely survived the financial burst of the collector market in the Nineties, the reorganization of storylines into multi-issue, self-contained trade paperbacks (whose extremely decompressed storylines tended to deprive the classic monthly format of 20/24 pages of narrative momentum), the fateful transformations of the digital era (which killed physical distribution and made the very structure of the floppy obsolete), and the current ownership by giant corporations only interested in intellectual properties to be adapted to other media (which results in poor management end even poorer editorial decisions), the monthly floppy has been steadily declining in sales. Today the market is largely dominated by graphic novels and Japanese manga.
The market shares shrink and the prices for new monthly comics keep on rising, and yet, against all odds, it seems as if there is still some life in the floppies of yore: as nostalgic connoisseurs deplore current storylines as unengaging and young readers look elsewhere for entertainment, second-hand market shares of old comic books are skyrocketing. A new institutional system for managing and evaluating old comic books, objects equally fragile and precious, has been put in place from the bottom up to try and avoid another market implosion led by careless speculators – and cannily boost demand and collectability out of mass-produced items available in the hundreds of thousands and constantly reprinted. Third-party grading companies like CGC (Certified Guaranty Company) provide a “multi-step grading process that is designed to ensure consistency, accuracy and integrity while safeguarding your valuable collectibles”, as we read on the CGC website (CGC 2024), and dominate the flow of high-quality second-hand objects in the vintage market, as if they were inestimable cargoes of Spice Melange from Arrakis. Yet, the value of each single floppy remains highly susceptible to the whims of the market, with the success of the latest comic book movie as one of the main proxies to boost the value of the comic book characters’ key appearances.
In this peculiar market, digital media paradoxically support the physical preservation of the precious floppies. Social media are a hotspot for virtual communities of collectors eager to exchange opinions and sell their collections, while countless YouTube videos offer quick guides to custom-bind old floppies into DIY omnibuses, advertise the outstanding skills of graphic designers able to produce beautiful custom covers, judge the restoration of invaluable but mouldy key issues from the Golden Age of Comics (late 1930s-mid-1950s), and suggest practical ways to preserve original, untouched, and sought-after issues in the best possible way to ensure the highest CGC grading – and therefore the highest long-term return on investment. The rewards of the few justify the efforts of the many: in January 2022, a privately auctioned, CGC-graded copy of Superman #1, valued 8.0 out of 10, sold for $5.3 million (CGC 2022). A panoply of collectors’ paraphernalia thus takes centre stage: protective polyester sleeves, acid-free cardboards to provide floppies with structural solidity, cardboard or plastic longboxes to store the coveted issues, powder-free latex gloves to properly handle each item without leaving potentially damaging skin oil on its pages, and Mylar slabs with a CGC grading stamp – the holy Grail of contemporary collector preservation – are all required to ensure the longest possible life span of the once perishable pulp magazines. In this collector frenzy, it is hard not to think that the floppy – once found yellowed by the sun in seaside discount bins for a few cents, passed from hand to hand, and consumed by multiple readings – dies a bit, its moral lessons forever entombed in a transparent sarcophagus.
Refs.
CGC (2022). “Mile High Copy of Superman #1 Sells for Record $5.3 Million.” CGC Comics, 13 April. https://www./news/article/10085/cgc-graded-superman-1-sells-for-over-5-million-dollars/ [Last Accessed 14 February 2024]
CGC (2024). “CGC Grading Process.” CGC Comics. https://www.cgccomics.com/grading/grading-process/ [Last Accessed 14 February 2024]
Pappu, Sridhar (2000). “We Need Another Hero.” Salon, 18 October. Archived at https://www.theguardian.com/weblogarticle/0,,194417,00.html [Last Accessed 14 February 2024]
Sottile, Zoey (2023). “It’s a Bird. It’s a Plane. It’s a Superman Comic Under the Constitution for This Congressman.” CNN, 7 January. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/07/politics/robert-garcia-superman-comic-oath-trnd/index.html [Last Accessed 14 Febraury 2024]
Wolk, Douglas (2021). All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told. New York: Penguin.