Fanboy Radio: Myth In Comics
February 18, 2009
Through a colleague at work, I found out about a radio show here in the Dallas/Fort Worth area called “Fanboy Radio” devoted to comic books and popular culture. I shared with this colleague a link to the most recent issue of Journey to the Sea, which includes an article on Batman. After some discussions over lunch, it seemed like a fun idea for me to appear as a guest to talk about comic books and myth. The show was live last Sunday night, and the audio has now been posted online:
Live radio is interesting. I’m not sure I agree with everything I said (which is strange but true), but overall I was quite happy with how it went. Here are some excerpts from the conversation:
A lot of people think that a myth is something that another person or culture believed was true but isn’t. […] I personally don’t think that’s a very good way to look at myth.
Another way to define myth is [to say that] when a story or a narrative or characters become bigger than their authors […] when a story reaches different authors, different versions, different inflections […] that’s when it becomes a myth. […] A character like Batman would really have reached that level.
I think it’s really good to include in the Batman story what happens when Bruce Wayne dies. Why does he die? How does he die? You do hope it isn’t just from a bad tuna sandwich; you hope it’s something that has more meaning. The two stories we have from Neil Gaiman [in Batman #686] — the Catwoman story and Alfred’s story — I think were both really powerful ways that Batman could die.
I’d be careful [not] to say the myths were created just to help us cope, but it does seem that [this is] one of the purposes that they serve.
I definitely enjoyed the opportunity to learn a bit more about recent developments in comic books. I found out that DC Comics had recently decided to kill Batman, commissioning Neil Gaiman (popular fantasy author and screenwriter) to write two issues related to Batman’s death. I had liked what little of Neil Gaiman’s work I had experienced so far, but this definitely sparked my interest. I have now finished the first volume of The Sandman, his series of comic books from the late 1980s: I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading the remaining volumes.