Flight.
We see comic book superheroes doing it all the time, and we ourselves do it, if only in especially happy dreams.
Comics were on safe ground — or perhaps soaring above it — when they relied on the fantasy of unaided human flight to appeal to the children who dominated their audience. Author J.M. Barrie had already covered that ground in his plays and books about Peter Pan, a character he created in 1904.
“Childhood is a time of constraints which frustrate even the happiest children and the flying Peter is an emblem of freedom and autonomy,” noted Marjery Hourihan in Deconstructing The Hero. “But more powerfully symbolic is the fact that he teaches the Darling children to fly, for they are surrounded by the kind of restrictions and impediments that children recognize — rules about bedtime, medicine, pajamas, baths, night lights — so it seems that if they can fly then any child can break free. Their departure through the nursery window, ‘like a flight of birds’ is an exhilarating image of escape from the mundane. In liberating the children from the boring routine of school and office which Mr. Darling represents, Peter, like Jack in Jack And The Beanstalk, overcomes the giant, the oppression of public authority.”
The first of the comic book superheroes, Superman, effectively flew by leaping when he debuted in 1938, but developed the genuine and inexplicable power of unaided flight in short order. Fawcett’s Captain Marvel followed the same path.
As the proliferating superheroes began to develop specialties, DC Comics’ Hawkman was the first to rely primarily on flight when he debuted in January 1940. Quality Comics’ Black Condor followed four months later.
Black Condor’s origin, penned by Will Eisner, was ridiculous even by comic book standards. He was an orphan raised by condors, a Tarzan of the Birds, if you will.
Trained to fly by his avian aides, the Black Condor also acquired a costume, a black light ray gun and a secret identity as a U.S. senator, Thomas Wright.
Readers forgot about his laughable origin when they saw the gorgeous art of Lou Fine, who was at least a decade ahead of his time with his graceful and evocative illustrations. An acknowledged influence on artists Jack Kirby, Alex Toth, Jim Steranko and Gil Kane, Fine was capable enough to make human figures seem lighter than air.
By the sixth issue of Crack Comics (Oct. 1940), the Black Condor found himself facing a whole city-wrecking army of airborne villains, the Kite Men.
America’s fictional skies were pretty full in 1940, and they’ve stayed that way. Even those superheroes who can’t actually fly — Batman, Spider-Man, Daredevil, the Hulk, Tarzan and others — often display the same freedom of movement by swinging from buildings or trees or jumping great distances.
Why is flight central to the image of the superhero?
“I think that is the natural impulse to be free, to rise above where one has been, not to be pulled back by the gravitational pressures of family or society,” explained psychologist and author Nathaniel Branden. “Everybody wants to fly, and the metaphor for that is literal flying. But they flying they want is not physical, but spiritual. But it’s symbolized through flight. … So if we imagine being able to fly around in the sky like Superman does, it kind of stands for an incredible experience of freedom.”
About Author
