Martinex1: It is Labor Day here in the U.S.A. and we are celebrating the American working men and women. In comic books, the heroes and villains often have secret identities, and in those lives they hold jobs. They have to pay the rent after all!
The most memorable character to me, in terms of earning a living, was Peter Parker. He was always trying to earn his way and was constantly worrying about money and income. Whether taking on wrestlers for cash, or as a freelance photographer, or as a lab assistant at the University, Parker was often living check to check and just trying to get a foothold in the working world.
Steve Rogers, while not acting as Captain America, worked as a policeman and also as a comic book artist. He definitely had a varied resume.
Thor was secretly Dr. Donald Blake. Thunderstrike was a paramedic. Hawkeye worked at the carnival and later in life was the head of security for a large corporation. Barry Allen worked in the police forensic laboratory. The Falcon was a social worker. Hank Pym was a renowned biochemist, as were the Beast and Bill Foster. Janet Van Dyne was a designer. Ms. Marvel's Carol Danvers had a role as a military liaison and as a magazine publisher. Wonder Man was an actor. The Black Panther taught at a school for a while. Matt Murdock was an attorney. Even the Vision acted as a private detective under the pseudonym Vic Shade. Superman was the star reporter Clark Kent. And of course there were always the rich industrialists and billionaires in the hero ranks as well with the likes of Batman and Iron Man.
The Fantastic Four just kind of hung out and lived off of Reed's patents and inventions I guess. I don't recall Ben (after his fighter pilot days), Johnny or Sue having jobs.
The villains also had careers. Electro was power line electrician (I recall thinking that was cool and would watch linemen when they worked in our neighborhood). Trickster was an actor. The Beetle was a master mechanic. Whirlwind was a chauffeur. Many were scientists who invented their gear or stumbled upon their powers like the Living Laser and Blackout.
The Wrecking Crew were not your typical wreckers, as Dirk Garthwaite their leader originally was a paid criminal who used his crowbar to destroy crime scenes. His teammate Thunderball is a doctor.
The villains also had their rich, powerful, and ruthless business types in Lex Luthor, Count Nefaria, Norman Osborne, and Obadiah Stane,When you were growing up and reading comics, were you intrigued by the characters' jobs while they were in their civilian identities? I know I was. I was particularly interested in the scientists - both good and bad. I had no idea what a biochemist was. And I found it hard to believe that Superman could hang around all of those slick reporters and not get discovered. I liked that Marvel focused more on the roles characters played when they weren't fighting in spandex.
Did comic reading actually make you consider some careers when you were young? Were there enough working class heroes? Who did I miss that had an intriguing occupation?
Today is a holiday, so let's relax and enjoy the day off. Hopefully the comments and discussion will take us in some interesting and thought provoking directions without a lot of work. Chew the fat. Cheers all.
17 comments:
I've been indulging in vintage Simon and Kirby Golden Age tales of late and for the most part (Wesley Dodds and Bruce Wayne aside) the heroes of this period were more grounded than those that came later. The villains wanted money and went about stealing it and the heroes stopped them. Gangsters were as common as anyone else in the thick and thin of the society and motivations felt small (when it wasn't Nazis of course) and understandable.
In the comics of my youth, the heroes seemed to pay lip service to jobs but didn't really feel the consequences of not showing up for work. Peter Parker, the most famous, was by the time I got to him a pretty comfortable chap who got dough when he needed it despite Jameson's attempts to stiff him. The Parker of the Ditko years did struggle more. Thor was a doctor, DD was a lawyer, Iron Man was an "industrialist" -- code for rich as heck, and so on and so forth. Few of them really hustled for a living with any regular vigor. Reality was dabbled in but not explored. DC's Ragman was a real standout in this regard and memorable for it.
When Captain America needed a job he became a cop for a short time and then an artist. That's the one that always annoyed me, having heroes work in fields that the writers were familiar with. Ms.Marvel was a security officer but when she got her own gig became a writer and editor. It felt to me like the world was a bit too small and that folks with actual jobs which required some sweat were often ignored.
Coal miners, steel workers, farmers, all that kind of thing were regularly ignored save for a background character now and again. I know that fantasy ain't about real life, but when heroes always seem to have all the cash they require it steals a little of the potency of the story.
I notice it on TV a lot now too. Characters can fly all over creation without a moment's thought about the costs of that, despite the reality that most folks don't fly hardly at all. I'm always bemused by the daily airplane story on the news which is certainly not going to affect most folks living day to day which these days is a large percentage of the population. Never do you see a bus story nor do you see much about the poor unless that's the focus of the story or as we're seeing now, the folks caught up in the hurricane.
Entertainment (and news counts as that half the time these days) doesn't want to bring its audience down with such humdrum realities, but once upon a time when the distance between the haves and the have nots was not so immense it might have happened a bit more often just as a matter of course.
Heroes can often start out struggling, but sooner than later they usually find a savvy way to move beyond those limits. The creators seem to get bored with the limits of financial worry.
Rip Off
Luke Cage - Hero for Hire - besides Peter Parker, was the only character whose living was interesting to me. It was central to his character for the first several issues, as I recall?
Didn't Luke even have to relocate b/c he couldn't make the rent?
Anyhow, as a young kid making little delivering papers and emptying the garbage, making money (to buy comics!) was important to me. And once the price of comics started escalating faster than my allowance and paper route earnings, I probably learned something about inflation, and real vs. nominal income and expenses, lol.
I'm with Rip in regard to our heroes and villains seemingly having a bottomless pit of money. For all of the superpowers they exhibited, perhaps the toughest stress on my suspension of disbelief was the financial means to go and do, and to create all of the weapons and vehicles. Not to mention everyone had some pretty cool living conditions. And another thing... all of those costumes looked pretty nice, and fit perfectly. Not sure I could pull that off myself.
But to the question at hand. "Biochemist" seemed a catch-all for "super-brainiac", didn't it? Hank Pym could hold his own alongside Stark, inventing the AI that would become Ultron, as well as developing the disruptor he carried as Yellowjacket. T'Challa was a master of all sciences, to rival Reed Richards in some cases. And at some point after graduating from the Xavier school Hank McCoy joined the super-science club. Does anyone know what Roxxon did? Must have been everything, as Hank was one of their stars.
To occupations that added characterization -- of course the press jobs seem obvious, helping Spidey and Superman do their thing. But for all heroes, that anyone could hold down a job at all with the constant running away at a moment's notice is some sort of miracle. And how does anyone have enough personal days to just fly off to the Kree/Skrull War for a week or three?
So the final verdict? Often a hero's occupation served as a kind of catalyst at the beginning of a story, or at least as a convenient plot device to cause tension in the middle of the tale. But even as a kid, some of the situations that were created caused me an eyeroll.
Doug
Jon Sable was a children's book author, in contrast to his adventures as a mercenary. He falls in love with the woman who illustrates his stories. This was cool for me, to see characters in creative artistic professions.
Rip and Doug make good points for sure. Some heroes' jobs were just being heroes - I liked when they made it a point that the Avengers were given room and board and payed a stipend, so folks like Viz, the Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye could just hang around the mansion. When Gyrich cut Hawkeye, it was a plot point that Clint had to go find work. But I agree with you in that the money had to be flowing for much of what went on, and other than Iron Man it seemed rather impossible that some lower level characters would be able to come up with the cash for their gadgets. Whirlwind and the Beetle must have robbed some banks for their swag, but it is hard to understand how a character like Torpedo kept up his rocket boosters on an insurance salesman salary. (Machine Man worked for the same company as Torpedo if I recall correctly). It would have been interesting to see heroes and villains fail because they didn't keep up on the costly maintenance of their gear. And conversely why didn't they just sell their tech and retire in style to Boca Raton; even Paste Pot Pete could have had a lucrative career at 3M.
The team that bothered me the most were the X-Men in terms of this discussion - it's not like they paid tuition at Xavier's School. What the heck was going on there for income? I want to see the students eating ramen noodles and spaghettios from a crock pot like I did when I was in college. What degree did Hank actually graduate with to get a job at Roxxon? Balancing on a ball while dodging darts!
It is funny at Marvel how many folks worked for Stark and Roxxon and at the Bugle. Nobody had a job at Sears or a distribution warehouse or at a barber shop. I guess we had US1 who was an over the road trucker (but let's try to forget that comic).
I did like how Luke Cage and his friends were Heroes for Hire. That was pretty ingenious and fit their storylines well. And I always thought Daredevil paid attention to his duties; in the Gene Colan era, he and Foggy were frequently working on cases and in court. He mostly did his crime fighting at night and was regularly tired or frazzled in the morning guzzling coffee.
I would have liked to see more heroes who worked in construction or in the trades though. Any plumber or welder heroes you can think of? I am struggling there.
I'm waiting for the day ROM Spaceknight gets a secret identity and a job (perhaps as an industrial sized toaster).
Interesting insights, guys! Count me in agreement with the consensus; most of our heroes got off pretty light in terms of earning a paycheck. I did find Peter Parker more identifiable in this regard. His sparse, empty Bronze Age apartment kind of resembled mine...
It would have been fun to see a hero or villain working at Burger King, or scanning groceries at Kroger. It would be superbly challenging to see how Spider-man, for instance, would break away to change when he had five shoppers backed up in his register lane. Testimony from a former cashier...
Yeah, I always wondered why villains who can invent all these fancy tech gadgets didn't just start a company and become the next IBM or Lockheed.
A lot of superheroes seemed to have science jobs; besides the ones already mentioned, Ray Palmer was a physicist and Barry Allen was a forensic scientist. Carter and Shiera Hall were museum curators/archaeologists; Wonder Woman worked for the UN and I think she trained to be an astronaut later. Of course, Hal Jordan had a bunch of jobs ... test pilot, truck driver, and didn't he sell insurance or something for a while? I liked the idea of Black Canary running a flower shop ... a much more serene pastime than her costumed life.
I always liked Machine Man/Aaron Stack's job as an insurance agent. It was as if he found the most banal job possible as a way to learn how to be human. ;)
I do like, however, that most supporting cast members tended to have jobs at which they earned the money to support themselves. Capt. Stacy, JJJ and Robbie, Alfred, Jarvis, Happy & Pepper, Jane Foster, Willie Lumpkin, all of the Hulkbuster types, Steve Trevor, and on and on. Often it was their workplaces which served as the center of a particular issue's chaos.
Come to think of it, that could get a person fired!
Doug
Martinex, what was HydroMan's profession?
Lots of baddies got jobs at certain places so they could get on the "inside". As mentioned earlier, Avengers #s 139-140 with the Whirlwind was a nice slice-of-life with ol' Whirly as the Pyms driver.
Doug
If I recall the one time being curious about "where the money comes from" it had to do with Spider Man and the Spider vehicle. I know I stopped reading about that time but having the "very expensive" dune buggy just seemed so out of context for a free lance reporter originally still living with his aged aunt, that it confirmed I needed a break from comics.
Where did the Spidey mobile come from, though? A gift or promo wasn't it? And then it ended up in the river or something?
For what it's worth, I did watch the first few episodes of Cage on Netflix and he was pushing a broom at the barber shop. I thought it was pretty cool and reminded me of the comic: being anchored in the poor part of town and working for a living.
Charlie- if I recall correctly, the Spider-mobile was paid for as a promotion for Corona Motors. They covered the expense in exchange for the publicity. And yes, it ended up in the river thanks to Mysterio, and was later revived as a weapon against Spidey by the Tinkered.
Oh, and Cage was great. My favorite of the Marvel Netflix shows.
Just a correction to the original post: Cap/Steve Rogers had a job as a freelance commercial illustrator, not a comic book artist. I thought that was actually pretty cool, and I remember during the Stern/Byrne and later DeMatteis/Zeck runs he was often shown worrying about deadlines and so forth.
Rip's point about people on TV just flying off somewhere without a thought to the cost also reminded me how fast characters on certain shows jet around the entire globe. For example, I remember watching an episode of X-files once a long time ago in which Mulder and some other guy, somewhere in the DC suburbs, realize they have to go to Russia - and then poof! In the next scene they're traipsing around in a forest in western Siberia, as though that doesn't involve an incredibly long and tiring plane flight, very likely with a time-consuming layover or two, as well as a long drive out to wherever they were...
Doug if I recall correctly Hydroman was a crewman on a cargo ship or on the docks. He falls into the ocean just as some experiment takes place and low and behold he is converted into living water. Why couldn't he and Sandman win all those castle making contests on the shore?
And CH47, Luke Cage is a decent show and very much centered in the Harlem neighborhoods. Watch for the Easter Egg in which Cage actually wears a yellow shirt and the metal tiara - classic.
Edo to bounce off of your comments about "flying around" where the heck did the X-Men get the Blackhawk jet??? That is not just some pocket change and they are not even "industrialists."
In the case of the X-men, it was never clearly stated during the time I was reading the series, but I think Xavier was supposed to be from one of those old money families. Also, there was one issue after Kitty trashed much of the X-mansion fighting off that demon in which Prof. X and the Angel are discussing the costs of repairs and Warren tells the prof that he'll give him any amount of money he needs. So the Worthington fortune (also old money apparently) also came into play in financing the rather posh lifestyle of everybody's favorite mutants.
That doesn't quite explain how they had an SR-71 Blackbird - which was still an exclusively military aircraft back in the '70s and '80s.
Garett and Mike - Florists and Children Book Authors seem to be a nice professional balance for superheroing.
Yeah Peter Parker, Matt Murdock, Clark Kent and the Heroes for Hire seemed to have the most realistic jobs out there. Of course, rich industrialists like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne would have the financial resources to pay for stuff like the Iron Man armor or the Batplane.
I always found it kinda funny that Bruce Banner had to work as a janitor when he wasn't the Hulk in a lot of issues, and somehow he always seemed to end up at a lab where he encounters some mad scientists or other lab-created monsters!
- Mike 'blue collar worker' from Trinidad & Tobago.
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