Myths and what can be made of them

When I was a kid reading "Adventure Comics" and "Superboy", not to mention "X-Men" before it became "Uncanny", there was essentially only one story. I suppose there was Earth-1 and Earth-2 but I never paid attention. There had been a Superman radio show, but I never heard it; and a TV show, but it wasn't aired in Ottawa. There were no movies or novels about Superman. Life was pretty simple.

And there was one X-Men, with a finite set of characters.

Watching "X-Men Evolution" today, I realized how wide and deep the myths have become. We have become so accustomed to overlapping realities - there's the movie Superman, the "Lois and Clark" TV version, the "Superboy" TV version (remember that?), and now "Smallville". There's the pre-Crisis Superman and the post-crisis Superman. Version after version, sometimes in the same medium and the same continuity, sometimes not. Sometimes versions contradict themselves, sometimes they steal ideas from each other, sometimes they stand alone.

"X-Men" is the same. When Marvel (in an amazing leap of inspiration) decided that there was not just one X-Men reality, the possibilities were suddenly infinite. I was marvelling - er, I mean expressing amazement that there is so much Pyro/Iceman slash suddenly, since the second X-Men movie. But that's because the movie is so much its own reality, its own continuity. In one version, Rogue is Anan paquin, scared t fly a plane. In the next version, she's a kick-ass kid not scared to fly anywhere without a plane. Ages and situations are as fluid as plot developments are.

That has happened in both cases is that the idea has exceeded the characters. Instead of Superman (or Clark Kent) as an individual we have the concept of "a benign alien who uses his unusual abilities to help people". Instead of any particular group of X-Men we have the concept of a world where Mutants and humans are estranged, and some Mutants fight humans while others protect them.

I see it as a sort of coming of age of the comic book concepts, but also as a sign of how adaptable culture is. Those themes are the classic paradigms of comics, they aren't confined to comics. It's like a genie out of the bottle: the world at large is becoming conversant with ideas only a certain segment of fans used to know.

Myths of our time.