Super Heroes replacing Mythology

[Bullet Sniper]

The stories are works of fiction. Even Mythology is fiction. So in essence, they are the same. However, I feel as though the "Superhero" thing is something of a new idea whereas Mythological characters have been around for a very long time and because of that, comic book stories can't be up their just yet. With that said however, thousands of years from now...maybe Batman and Superman might be fictional stories from long ago. Stories families will tell around the campfire. Who knows?

All I do know is that comic books contain some of the best stories in all of media. Mythology has nothing on them

>comics being better than mythology.
http://www.abload.de/res/imgs/403.gif

[MichaelC]

I would say the main thing comics and mythology have in common is they both say a lot about the psychology of the people of their time.

[Paradox]

Bullet Sniper dots:

>comics being better than mythology.
http://www.abload.de/res/imgs/403.gif

What a wonderful picture of a pixel!

Pssst, I think they're blocking your source.

[Bullet Sniper]

What a wonderful picture of a pixel!

Pssst, I think they're blocking your source.

Oh crap, I was meant to post this:


in a 4chan-ish response to the guy saying that "mythology has nothing on comics" (it's also been used A LOT on outskirtsbattledome of naruto fan forums especially in late 2011 and 2012).

But great to see the great Paradox take note of my wonderful response to the above guy. ;D

[kingmyth]

Mythology is just unbeatable when compared to Marvel/DC Comics Super Heroes.

You cannot view Superman as the next Hercules.

[Arfguy]

Mythology is just unbeatable when compared to Marvel/DC Comics Super Heroes.

You cannot view Superman as the next Hercules.

I actually think Superman's story goes beyond Hercules. Then again, I'm surrounded by people who are more into pop culture than mythology. Further still, I don't consider myself anything more than a skimmer of mythology. I find mythological stories and characters cool, but I know very little about them beyond what may have been made for TV, movies or video games.

[kingmyth]

I actually think Superman's story goes beyond Hercules. Then again, I'm surrounded by people who are more into pop culture than mythology. Further still, I don't consider myself anything more than a skimmer of mythology. I find mythological stories and characters cool, but I know very little about them beyond what may have been made for TV, movies or video games.

I mean that Superman cannot be seen as a replacment for Hercules like being in shows or books about ancient history.

[t hedge coke]

Mythology's just not - and never will be - one monolithic thing. It's accumulated history, parables, deliberate fictions, just so and campfire stories all taken together and usually absorbed third or fourth-hand through cultural osmosis. The average person doesn't know what parts of King Arthur are six hundred years old and which parts were invented or added in the Nineteenth Century, and really, it doesn't matter in terms of which is more validly "mythological." Most of the "myths" that people have read, they read summaries or retellings, and fair enough. It's the summarizing and retelling that gives it continual resonance. Often, the earliest versions simply don't have as much resonance or durability as the continually polished and revised versions. If you're studying an ancient culture, Pygmalion feeling up a statue and bringing it to life is important, but the general resonance of such statue-comes-to-life stories is less dependent on that detail. The idea of Atlantis or the idea that we used to be four-legged and feel more complete is more resonant, and more memorable, than the political and satirical elements represented by the original Atlantis or back-when-we-were-whole/true-love parables.

"Mythology" isn't distinct from literature, song, entertainment, history, or religion, it's just most memorable or resonant parts of all of that come down through time and revisitations.

We correct and adjust myths, today, with each retelling. And we add to myths, with retellings, new versions. The myth of the mono-myth, even, has revised how we look at so many old stories. Something as simple as minor changes in Marvel's Thor have raised generations, now, who think of Thor as blond, Loki's brother, etc.

But, current stories can be shaped to fit our politics, our perspectives, without having any disagreeable baggage. Retellings always, in a way, have the old versions, and all the old mess of misogyny or xenophobia, paranoia and misinformation hanging about them. It's no one's fault, it's just that those stories originate, by nature of time, from more ignorant eras. No amount of wanting to look back and see ancient China or ancient Greece as brilliant super-enlightened times changes that they thought on basic levels some very very stupid stuff.

[TroubleWithTrebles]

Excellent points.

Added:

Heracles (original actual name of Hercules, due to his relationship to Hera) is born under a curse of horrid and all pervasive family dynamics that are nigh cosmic in scope, as opposed to the happygolucky Mayor McCheese garbage version abusing the unrequited talents of Kevin Sorbo.

It is sometimes easy to spot when a Victorian attempts to paint arsenic and lead based pigments of Anglo Roman bullpuckey over more "twue" versions. Just look for the Lady Gregory label (BARF) or names of her cohorts.

Folklore is not Myth nor equal. Folklore is a sports physiotherapist, myth is a surgeon who can replace a kneecap or hip. Chupacabra is folklore, Quetzocoatl is a deity. Mythic, to anglo academes.

Myths define the world, and Afterlife, and do not care if someone is too lazy to learn enough to comprehend what the myths say. Myths don't care if someone reads 500 cheat codes for games but are a person too lazy to ever crack open a thesaurus. Superheroes exist to make you feel better about yourself no matter how lazy or schmucky you are because they need your hard dollars or soft dollars. Myths don't give a crap about how you feel about yourself and demand that you improve yourself for the simple sake of the fact that you bloody well owe that effort to the universe.

Superheroes never dare to have the balls to challenge you like that.

Saying superheroes can replace myth is like saying tweeters and internet article writers can replace the Abrams, Moores, Scorseses, Capotes, Sarah Waters, Millers, Gaimans and Nolans they tweet about.

And no part of this post may be reproduced in any way in any medium on any platform for any purpose including but not limited to university papers or blog entries. Except for the paragraph above THIS paragraph.

[t hedge coke]

Let the record show Neil Gaiman tweeting has never caused Gaiman to replace himself.

Or, it has and nobody noticed.

Also, let the record show that Gaiman, Scorcese, and Capote all may have written articles at some time. In fact, I'm sure they did.

And Kevin Sorbo was kinda awesome as Hercules even if that show never made any sense.

[Kid A]

I don't think there's anything inherent to superheroes that make them contemporary equivalent to mythology. They can be used as that if they are written that way, but I wouldn't point to Avengers vs X-Men and say "this is replacing mythology!" It's a case by case basis, I guess. I see Swamp Thing as environmental mythology, Wonder Woman as feminist mythology, etc.

Superheroes aren't gods so much as they're fairy/folk tales. They're awe-inspiring and can be culturally relevant, but that's basically it.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

@t hedge coke: i also said nothing SHOULD replace mythology. Mythology is too awesome and there is nothing in modern media fiction that can replace it in my heart. Just like teen idol pop music of today will never replace classical music or 80's pop music. To say otherwise is just garbage and blasphemy.

Now are you saying that absolutely nothing in the world coming out today is as good as anything that came out then, or that it doesn't matter because the older material is from an age of supposed automatic authenticity and therefore better by default? Because while those are both depressing, the latter's a lot more so.

Anyway, some of them, I think. You can argue that the broader universes constitute a sort of mythology. Certainly some individual heroes have ascended to that level, though not all.

These guys, for instance?



People are absolutely going to know what their deal is a hundred, likely even a thousand years from now. But that doesn't mean this guy:



Is likely to be remembered in song and story just because he happens to also wear some tights.

Also, everything t hedge coke said.

[kingmyth]

Remember the New Gods from DC Comics, It would be crazy if someone was trying to add them to Mythology.

Modern Superheroes are like almost 100 years old, No were near ancient.

[Kid A]

Steven Grant made some good points in his old column.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=19863

The problem here is that most of us misunderstand the nature of myths. They've been presented to us as anthologies of stories of gods and heroes, from this culture or that. (The idea that mythologies are story cycles is reinforced by the use of the term "mythos" for interrelated shared world (or concept) stories by disparate writers, thank you very much, August Derleth.) The common view is that mythologies (it also doesn't help that the term was hijacked by Barthes and other semiologists to illustrate their philosophies, which once applied mainly to literature but have seeped into general use on general targets) are mainly the texts of dead religions, and religion and mythology are connected, but mythology isn't exactly that either. Mythology isn't even storytelling.

Mythology – it's important to differentiate between its nature and its artifacts; the stories are the artifacts – is a civilization's environment. It's a means by which members of that civilization make sense of the world and the times they exists in. (Religion, on the other hand, is an attempt to form a personal relationship with the world, or the powers perceived to control it. Mythology has no such requirements.) Commonly, mythologies evolve in civilizations where stories are passed down via oral, not written, transmission, which neuters all concepts of "authorship" and their content and meanings shift with the demands of the times. The civilization is the author.

But superheroes are not good vehicles for addressing our times. By their nature they stand outside our reality, and holding them up as an evolutionary goal is a basic (again, very '30s-'50s science fiction) misunderstanding of evolution, which has no "goals." Comics stories aren't the joint creation of our civilization but the products of individual minds, even when those minds work in consort (and just as frequently at cross-purposes) in a "shared universe," a rather pathetic, puny shadow of mythology. They're just stories, they don't function as myths function. It's not reflexive; myths are stories but stories aren't myths. (We also nurse the misdefinition of "myth" as falsehood, but that doesn't apply in this context either. In their own civilizations, myths may not be true, but they aren't strictly false either. They're analogues of reality.)

[kingmyth]

Steven Grant made some good points in his old column.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?p...ticle&id=19863

Thats sums it up, He explains it very well why Superheroes cannot be a new Mythology.