for Stan Lee, December 28, 1922-November 12, 2018. Nuff respect. Nuff said.
MY WIFE CALLS my novel And Sometimes They Fly “the Caribbean superhero book.” That’s how she referred to it the fifteen years I spent writing it, though its starting point became clear to me after the events of 9/11. Before you think she was mistaking magic realism or speculative fiction fantasy for something else, no, And Sometimes They Fly really does deal with heroes, legends and myth building in the context of Barbados and comics.
I was and still am a comics collector. When I moved to Barbados from Canada in 1996, an old college friend and fellow pannapictagraphist would buy and store my books until my next trip Back Home. Like me, Mike, who is also a dedicated high school teacher with a BA in English, can’t help but see comics as literature. Among my influences as a writer, alongside Joseph Conrad, Alice Munro, Elmore Leonard, Robert Cormier, and my ArtsEtc partner Linda M. Deane, stand Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Alan Moore, and Ho Che Anderson.
Stan Lee was the first influence I was conscious of when I started to read comics. His storytelling was energetic and of the day. “Excelsior!” There was something exciting and dynamic about the diversity of his characters. Even then, you could glimpse the mythical as he learned to balance the comic and the tragic without getting too lost in the melodramatic. Lee, from comic script to editorial bullpen, never seemed to take himself too seriously. The seriousness of the work, on the other hand, was his priority. If his language was at times madcap, his intent was far from. At the time of his greatest creations, Stan Lee was seeking to do something original—go his own way. That took considerable talent but also great artistic courage. It helped that he was having fun doing things in comics and with comics (like superhero angst, or having teens in the leading tights) both he and readers knew had never been done before but made perfect why-not sense. All this and more made me want to tell my own stories, to write—comics, at first. All this, and more, I still seek to achieve with my own words.
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CANADIAN POET and anarchist George Woodcock once commented that “Canadians do not like heroes, and so they do not have them.” Initially, I had set And Sometimes They Fly entirely in Canada; I wanted to explore this notion of the heroless society. After living in Barbados, where my parents came from, and revisiting the Caribbean folklore of my youth, I began to see similarities between how the two countries treated their heroes: with equal measures of reverence and mistrust. Then the Twin Towers were attacked and fallen, and it seemed to me unwise to talk of heroes in terms of one setting, one time and place, when so many people everywhere suddenly felt threatened.
In 1979, as a boy looking for local legends as committed as Robin Hood was to Sherwood Forest, Chris Claremont and John Byrne gave me and other proud Canadian readers of American comics Guardian (originally Weapon Alpha, then Vindicator). Mark Shainblum and Gabriel Morrisette followed this up five years later with the appearance of Northguard. Prior to these two national heroes, back in 1975, Robert Comely released his Captain Canuck comics; and in my hometown library I came across an anthology featuring Canada Jack, Johnny Canuck and Nelvanna of the Northern Lights, all created “at home” during World War II when comics from the States weren’t shipping across the border.
To paraphrase a line from Frank Miller’s 1986 Daredevil story arc “Born Again” with artist David Mazuchelli: they all wore the flag, and that made these characters of mighty interest to me. Woodcock’s assertion aside, these were indigenous, homegrown heroes birthed to battle alongside their allies, fight evil, and inspire victory, hope.
That's the nature of Western superheroes, isn’t it? Even so, their efforts increasingly in these shadowy times are not without great sacrifice. If he or she shows up, the hero doesn’t always live to fight another day; saving the world is done an hour at a time—or, as in the action television series 24, from hour to hour—not in decisive, winners-take-all battle scenes.
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KIEFER SUTHERLAND'S Agent Jack Bauer in 24 is the ultimate contemporary superhero. He’s faithful to his mission. He protects the people he loves (and the planet). He keeps his word. He’s always honourable, even when circumventing untenable orders. Only a Canadian actor like Sutherland could play him as strong and sympathetically as he does. But Bauer doesn’t always win.
Meanwhile in Barbados, here is a world where art centres are named after politicians. The politician, elected or otherwise, as superhero (or supervillain) is not uncommon. Barbadian National Heroes Sarah Ann Gill, Sir Grantley Adams and Errol Barrow share hallowed space with Lincoln, Churchill, Castro, Manley, Kennedy, and Trudeau the Elder. Is there anything wrong with naming a building the Errol Barrow Centre for Creative Imagination? Metropolis, say, doesn’t have the Superman Centre for Creative Imagination—but that’s the point: they do have a Superman after which to name one: an alien, yes, but raised in the American Midwest on a small farm in Smallville, later to work as a humble city reporter, and powered by the Earth’s yellow sun. What "everyday" heroes do Barbadians have?
The villains seem easier to name. Barbadians have the steel donkey, baccous, la djablès, and a number of other mythical folk creatures. Although there’s nothing that says the Heart Man can’t use his powers for good, or that he can’t be recast as a she, none of these characters (at present) walks wholly or truly in the light. And Sometimes They Fly is an attempt to coax their bright nemeses out of obscurity into useful service, particularly at a time when the first instinct for many is to run and hide during a crap storm, or let someone else clean up the mess.
To find these everyday heroes, it’s tempting to drain the pool of all politics. Honestly, political engagement, like a codename, has always been required. Superman, Captain America, even Batman and Wonder Woman, are political symbols of one age or another. Among the many ideas I wanted to explore with super-powered Barbadian characters like Marsha Durant, Franck Hurley and David Rayside in my novel is the notion that if you want to have a greater say in how your world turns out, you have to be willing to make a greater contribution; you have to be willing to take action, and risk sacrifice.
It’s not about military might making right, either, nor about seeking favourable odds in the war against evil. We sometimes forget, because of who they are, and sometimes because of where we come from, that all superheroes are outgunned, even the mightiest. All superheroes have a fatal weakness that can possibly bring them to defeat.
In this way, they are very much like us…or we like them. Batman and Spiderman are two of my favourite characters; that’s because the tougher the challenge, the greater their determination to overcome it. On my desk is a fierce Randy Bowen bust of the Black Panther, who embodies the strength, stealth, pride, and ingenuity of his people. These heroes fight knowing that with great power comes great responsibility, and that any one of us, at any time, can wield that power for the good of all.
A version of this essay first appeared on the Bajan Reporter in June 2013 at https://www.bajanreporter.com/2013/06/writing-the-caribbean-superhero-no... Please also see https://www.bajanreporter.com/2018/11/stan-lee-americas-greatest-novelis...
