Monday 5 May 2003

Pic of the day: The book. See below.

Small(ville) supermen

Today I Bought a paperback. This is a rare event in itself, as I generally buy books in electronic form these days, if at all. I think I possibly read less fiction than I write, comics not included. And I don't really have room for more dead trees in my apartment; rather less. But I made an exception for this book. It was Smallville - strange visitors. (Although the Norwegian title means Green death.) The book is by Roger Stern. The name seemed vaguely familiar, but then again it looks like a name anyone could have. Not like Magnus Itland or Skye Knighton, names that stand out in a crowd. To make a name like Roger Stern stand out would take a lot of hard work. Fortunately, this work has already been done.

The book was indeed quite alright. If the TV series Smallville is equally good, I don't really understand the scorn with which my local comic book dealer mentioned it. Of course, our discussion of the topic was rather short, since he had turned off the TV and I never even bought a TV.

I like the concept. It portrayed a Clark Kent who was still just barely able to levitate, so far only in his sleep. His X-ray vision was also just barely coming under his control, although his strength and speed were already superhuman. Not planet-moving or even mountain-moving, just incredible.

***

That's the kind of supermen I like, those who are still mostly human. While I found the Silver Age Superman (the planet-moving one) entertaining in a way, he never moved me the way the Byrne reboot did (until he too was powered up) or the original Superman from the first issues, the one who could leap over tall buildings but not fly. You may say what you want about Byrne – in fact, people seem to love to do just that – but the first Superman issues after his reboot is one of my treasures among comic books. I might even read them again, except I don't need to ... I can still kinda see them without even closing my eyes. I must have read them like 3 times or something.

The Smallville book has the same feel to it. Not quite as good, because it is diluted by a convoluted plot, but it is the kind of "superboy" I would have written myself. In fact, in a way much of my fiction writing is about superboys. Not planet-moving ones, but still larger than life in some ways. As I have told before, there is a reason for that. I identify with this kind of people.

I guess the popularity of superhero comics proves that a lot of men identify with superheroes. I guess that says something about exactly how realistic our self-image is ... A lot of us feel special, and I guess this is how it should be. After all, a lot of us are special, but usually only in a few ways. And it makes us kinda lonely, perhaps. Actually I think we are all lonely when young, and probably would even if we weren't special. But we were.

For my part, when I was young, I was more intelligent than the people around me. This was after I moved out from home, obviously. In high school, my abilities just seemed to grow out of proportion to the normal. Others would study hard to get good grades, while my grades just improved by themselves. I barely touched my homework – only when we had written homework to be handed in, and not always even then – but it just seeped in. I did not really consider that others might be envious. Then again I was a fairly reclusive person, so perhaps they thought I spent the evenings studying. In a way I did – I studied the doctrine of "Smith's Friends", a Norwegian sect of pious Christian mystics. School was hardly on my mind at all.

Later in life there was the other stuff about ESP and such, which I ran away from. I still think running away was a good idea. I really don't know what was going on there; these things don't exist, and yet I did experience them ... only they were not very reliable. These days, I am quite satisfied with reading and writing fiction about such things. They have, in my opinion, no place in the real world. But intelligence still has. It is actually quite useful in daily life.

***

With intelligence, difference in quantity kind of becomes difference in quality when it becomes great enough. There are some things that are simply very hard to understand if you aren't really bright. Actually a lot of things. Of course, some people have special talents within for instance maths, so they can understand equations and such that baffle most of us. And then there are the creative arts – the ability to compose music, paint images, sculpt and so on. Some people just have it, and some haven't. (And other could have had it, if they had started early and devoted lots of time to it ... but they didn't, so they convinced themselves it's just luck of the draw.)

I can see how such talents can be viewed as similar to supernatural powers. If someone can be much more intelligent than another, why shouldn't some people also be much stronger than others? (Actually, some are, but the difference seems to be less drastic than with the brain. You cannot jump over tall buildings, but you can jump to conclusions...) And if some people can compose music and others can't, it is not such a stretch to imagine that some people could fly or radiate heat from their eyes or such. We know it isn't possible, but it is not so very out of the same league as the great geniuses.

So in a way, I can understand small supermen. I can feel "it could have been me", although it never was. They are not so out of my league, as long as the things they do are just slightly impossible. But when it takes off, I lose touch. I guess I never really felt like a god. And this is probably a good thing for all involved!