(Certainly, some superheroes do take a lot of crap. Spider-Man, for instance? Hip deep. The Punisher? Not so much.)

But as I was saying: The superhero genre takes tons of abuse for being juvenile escapist pap. Crude drawing. Amateurish writing. Some of it is justified. Most, isn't. We get it from the common man on the street. We get it from comic book reading hipsters.

     We get it, already.
 

Can comics be for grown-ups? Sure. You need look no further than Ghost World or American Splendour or a good half-dozen other comics that haven't yet made the leap to film. (Give or take.)

But put a mask and cape on any of those characters?

Most comics are about superheroes, because that's what people who buy comics buy. And if people bought cop comics, or laywer comics, or doctor comics?

     Right?

Why should Ed Brubaker have to write superhero crime comics? Why does Giffen write superhero comedy? Why do all the fans want Warren Ellis to write superhero science-fiction?

Because it's what they want. Because it's all they've ever known? Is that it? Are we really all just sheep?

     Baa, I say.

     I mean... Bah!

Don't mess with the superheroes, my friends, or the superheroes will eat you.

As we discussed last week, Siegel and Shuster's Superman combined elements of the larger-than-life hero of adventure fiction with the masked vigilante archetype of the Grey Seal, Zorro, and the Phantom. This new character was something bold and original and, as a result, endlessly copied.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of superheroes were created in the late 30's and early 40's as comic book circulation took off. With World War II looming, there's no doubt that patriotic fervor sparked the nation's fascination with this colorful new legion of superheroes.

With publishers churning out so many new characters, it was only a matter of time before one would decide to team their characters up. Timely published the first superhero crossover in Marvel Mystery Comics #9 between the Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch.

Not surprisingly, it began with a tragic misunderstanding.

Later that year, DC did the folks at Timely one better, teaming a dozen of their characters in All-Star Comics #3. Together, these heroes became the Justice Society of America, the world's first superhero team.

Eventually, the popularity of superhero comic books waned. Marvel Mystery Comics ran 92 issues. All-Star Comics only ran 57.

But Superman remained. Batman remained. And a few others.

And they weren't getting any younger.

     Or older.

For decades, the characters' stories kept growing. Every month brought new adventures. And more backstory. And more backstory. And the crossovers meant that Batman's backstory was Superman's backstory too.

Then, in 1956, DC Comics revamped the Flash with a new origin, a new costume, and a whole new secret identity. If it was done as a movie, we'd call it a remake. But as a new ongoing series taking the place of another ongoing series that crossed over into still other ongoing series, it became something else.

If Superman had always been Superman, and he had been a member of the Justice Society, alongside the original Flash, how could he meet this new Flash, who had nothing to do with the original?

As most of you know, the answer came in 1961, with a story in Flash #123 called "Flash of Two Worlds." The original Flash met his remake. Think about that. Think.

That's like Bela Legosi parting the mists of time to meet Gary Oldman in full Bram Stoker's Dracula regalia.

Now, comics didn't invent parallel universes. Some (crazy) scientists have posited that parallel universes are real, and science-fiction writers had been batting the idea around for decades before Flash #123. But it is in comics that the concept has received it's most extensive exploration.
 

New superhero comics, every month, all tied together as part of the same multiverse of story. But it wasn't just superhero comics.

It was westerns, war comics, science-fiction, horror, and more. All part of the same enormous tapestry of fiction. Any book that DC published was stitched into the fabric.

When Sergeant Rock met Batman for the first time, in the pages of The Brave and the Bold, it might have been jarring, but over time it became instinctual.

Years later, DC used its mega-crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, to blend all of its parallel universes into one messy, but unified, history.

Their only real rival, Marvel Comics, enjoyed an "eat it too" stance on parallel universes from its beginning. Marvel used them now and then, but all the important stories happened in one main universe. (And sometime, it seemed, in only one main city.)

By 1985, "the Big Two" had both embraced a simple, but startling paradigm: every story can be told in a single universe*.

And it worked, in part, because the groundwork was laid early. Superheroes were never all one thing or another, as far back as the original Justice Society: Superman was an alien. Wonder Woman was one of the Amazons of Greek myth. Doctor Fate was a wizard. The Spectre was a ghost. The first Green Lantern got his power from magic, but the Flash got his power from science.

Following the new paradigm, every story is potentially a superhero story, because the world of the superheroes is the world where every story is possible.

     Chomp.

It's not about a man living a double life anymore. It's not about righting wrongs. It's not about concealing great power beneath a humble exterior.

The heroic tradition. The crime-fighter's secret identity. The popularity of superheroes. The nature of serial fiction. The crossover. All conspire to create a genre with one central metaphor:

     Anything you imagine is possible.

It is the central metaphor of the superhero genre. It is the metaphor of writing. Of all art. Of life.
 

     Why superheroes?
 

     Why superheroes?
 

What else is there?
 

     Next week, something practical.

This is one of Drew's classic Think Like Tomorrow columns.