Buffy The Vampire Slayer

When Dr. Peter Coogan appeared at New York’s Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art last September to talk about his book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre (MonkeyBrain Press, 2006), he said that of all the characters who possibly might be superheroes, he was most asked whether the Shadow and Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer qualified under his definition. Coogan’s answer in both cases was no.

I agree that the Shadow fits under the heading of pulp novel mystery men, rather than superheroes; indeed, he and Doc Savage are the foremost exemplars of the heroes of that genre.

But what about Buffy? With her new Dark Horse comics series, recounting what Whedon says represents what could have been the “eighth season” of her seven-season television series, on the horizon, that question takes on new relevance. Now that her primary venue is comics, is Buffy a comics superhero?

For the last two weeks I’ve been examining Coogan’s definition of the superhero in my column. Coogan establishes three major criteria for determining whether or not a character is a true superhero: a mission, which is altruistic, benefiting society rather than the hero, and long term; the super-powers; and a heroic identity, expressed through a codename and costume, and usually involving a secret identity.

Buffy has a mission, certainly: she is the Slayer, the “Chosen One,” selected by destiny to battle vampires and other supernatural menaces. At the end of her television series, she succeeded in activating the super-powers of all other potential Slayers in the world. But even though there are now other people who can follow the Slayer’s mission, she continues to do so, from choice, and has become the other Slayers’ leader.

Buffy has super-powers, which include superhuman strength and agility, and even that power Wolverine popularized, the ability to recover from injuries at superhuman speed.

It’s in the area of identity that Coogan believes that Buffy falls short. He states that “Buffy has an identity as the Slayer. But this identity is not a superhero identity like Superman or Batman. This identity is not separate from her ordinary Buffy identity the way Superman is from Clark Kent, whose mild-mannered personality differs greatly from Superman’s heroic character. The Slayer is not a public identity in the ordinary superhero sense. . . .Buffy does not wear a costume, and while such a costume is not necessary, it is typical” (Superhero, p. 48).

In discussing in his book why Luke Cage is a superhero, Coogan uncovered a precept which I have dubbed “declaration of intent”: Coogan demonstrated not only that Cage’s early editors and writers intended to make Cage a superhero, but the character himself expressed the intent to be a superhero. Last week I showed that a creator’s “declaration of intent” does not mean that his creation really is a superhero. The creator’s understanding of what a superhero is may be flawed. Hence, Tim Kring, the creator of NBC’s Heroes, believes it is a superhero show, but by Coogan’s definition, it isn’t. Nevertheless, as Coogan showed in his examination of Luke Cage, the intent of both the creator and the creation, as expressed in the work, is worth looking into.

Coogan claims that “The producers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer do not seem to regard it as a superhero show” (p. 48). Perhaps that is so, but do they consider Buffy a superhero? Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, clearly thinks of her as a superhero. Consider this exchange from the interview that Brian Bendis recently conducted with Whedon for Wizard. First, Whedon says that, “People long before I started writing Astonishing X-Men pointed out the similarities between Buffy and the X-Men that I hadn’t even noticed. I hadn’t even noticed that all her friends had turned into superheroes.” (Whedon is referring to the fact that several of Buffy’s friends, who aided her in combatting supernatural foes, had supernatural powers as well; hence they formed a super-powered team.) A little later, Bendis says, “I actually, in the first seasons of Buffy, saw the similarities between Buffy and Spider-Man.” Whedon replies, “Yes,” and Bendis clarifies, “The early [Steve] Ditko years of Spider-Man,” and Whedon does not disagree.

But it’s not just in retrospect that Whedon regards Buffy as a superhero. In interviews Whedon gave around the time he began writing the Astonishing X-Men comic (see “Comics in Context” #42-43), he stated that he has based Buffy in part on X-Men’s teenage heroine Kitty Pryde. He told New York Magazine (June 7, 2004), “If there’s a bigger influence on Buffy than Kitty, I don’t know what it was. . . .She was an adolescent girl finding out she has great power and dealing with it”.

In the Buffy television series there are frequent references to Buffy’s “super-powers,” as when in the episode “End of Days” her fellow Slayer Faith memorably and truthfully commented to Buffy, “Thank God we’re hot chicks with super-powers.” Buffy is explicitly called a “superhero” by her friend (and superhero comics buff) Xander in “The Harvest” (the second half of the two-parter that started the TV series) and by her mother Joyce in “Dead Man’s Party,” and is called “a superhero or something” by a supporting character in “Tabula Rasa.”

In the episode “Inca Mummy Girl” Buffy’s “Watcher,” her mentor Giles, tells her, “Your secret identity is gonna be difficult enough to maintain while this exchange student is living with you.” (Since Whedon is a known Marvel aficionado, his use of the term “Watcher” seems to be a homage to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Uatu the Watcher, a character from the superhero genre.)

So Whedon explicitly endowed Buffy with a “secret identity.” As Coogan states, Buffy’s dual identity is not as clearly defined as Superman’s. Coogan notes that “The Slayer is not a public identity”; the public is not aware that there is a Slayer, or that vampires are real. But Whedon’s point is that Buffy leads an alternate life as the Slayer that she has to keep secret from public knowledge. Whereas Clark Kent has to prevent the public from learning he is Superman, Buffy is like a Clark Kent who has to prevent the public from even knowing there is a Superman. In the show’s early seasons Buffy even kept her Slayer career secret from her oblivious mom, Joyce. At the time this reminded me of Peter Parker’s efforts for years to conceal his Spider-Man identity from his equally oblivious Aunt May. Whedon’s acknowledgment of similarities between Buffy and Spider-Man may mean that this specific parallel was intentional.

It strikes me that Buffy’s situation is also somewhat like that of Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Former surgeon Dr. Stephen Strange uses his real name in as Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts; again, his everyday identity and heroic persona are not as sharply differentiated as those of Superman and Clark Kent. But the general public of Marvel-Earth does not believe in magic, and considers Doctor Strange to be an eccentric, or even a charlatan. Only Strange’s allies—and enemies—know that he has actual magical abilities, and Strange considers it part of his mission to prevent the general populace from learning about the supernatural terrors from which he protects them.

Buffy’s adversaries, notably the vampires, usually know her “civilian” name but refer to her as the Slayer; this further underlines the idea that she has a dual identity.

Coogan contends that whereas Clark Kent and Superman have distinctly different personalities, Buffy’s personality is the same in her everyday life as it is when she acts as the Slayer. First, although the “mild-mannered” persona of Clark Kent is traditional (as in the Superman movies), there have been successful versions of Superman in which his personality is not noticeably different in his Clark Kent and Man of Steel personae: neither George Reeves on television nor John Byrne’s Superman in the comics feigned timidity or shyness as Clark. Second, there was a difference between Buffy’s personality as the Slayer and the way she behaved as an ordinary student. In high school and college, Buffy was usually more insecure and less assertive than she was as the independent, aggressive Slayer. In fact, I suspect it may have been a mistake when Whedon had Buffy drop out of college in the later seasons: without a “normal “ life to balance her Slayer career, her personality grew harder-edged, more solitary, and less appealing.

Of course Buffy does not wear a distinctive costume, but she does characteristically wear a cross around her neck, which to some extent fills the functions of the superhero insignia that Coogan terms a “chevron.” Since vampires are repelled by the sight of a cross, Buffy’s cross signifies her role as vampire slayer. Moreover, although Whedon is not religious, Buffy’s cross inescapably suggests that she is on God’s side, or at least on the side of moral right, and perhaps even that her Slayer career is a spiritual quest.

Let me tentatively suggest the following classifications for superhero double identities. Superman has a First Level Dual Identity, in which his heroic persona and everyday persona are clearly defined, distinct public identities: the general public does not know that Superman and Clark Kent are one and the same person. Mister Fantastic has a Second Level Dual Identity, in that the general public knows that his heroic identity (Mister Fantastic) and everyday identity (Reed Richards) belong to the same person. Buffy has a Third Level Dual Identity, in that the general public not only does not know that Buffy has a heroic persona (the Slayer), but does not even know that that heroic identity exists.

In Superhero Coogan establishes that a genre can exert what he likens to a gravitational pull. Notice the effect of such “gravity” on the vampires that Buffy battles. In various ways Whedon downplays the supernatural nature of vampires. Compare Whedon’s vampires to that more traditional pop culture vampire, Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows (see “Comics in Context” #11, 149). Barnabas can transform into a bat, and, by staring into people’s eyes, can place them under his mental control; Whedon’s vampires lack these powers. Even more importantly, Barnabas, as a vampire, is literally dead during the daylight hours, during which time he must lie in his coffin, and returns to his undead sort of life at dusk. Whedon’s vampires remain active during the day, although they must avoid direct sunlight, have no dependence on coffins (although Spike still made his home in a cemetery crypt), and can actually sleep rather than revert to true death during the daytime. But Barnabas, while his grip was indeed strong, was not usually portrayed as superhumanly strong. In contrast, Whedon continually emphasized that his vampires were superhumanly strong and agile, and nearly invulnerable. In other words, Whedon treated his vampires as if they were super-strong super-villains. While Buffy uses her stake to deliver the coup de grace, her principal weapon in combat is her own superhuman strength. Hence Buffy’s battles with vampires resemble fight scenes from the superhero genre. (The episode “Buffy vs. Dracula,” which pitted Buffy against a vampire with traditional supernatural attributes, was the exception to the rule that underlined how very different Whedon’s vampires are from the conventional model.)

Then there are explicit references to the superhero genre within the Buffy television series. The “Trio” of wannabe villains in the sixth season refer to themselves as “supervillains,” and even invent a freeze gun reminiscent of the weaponry of numerous comics supervillains, notably Batman’s Mr. Freeze and Flash’s Captain Cold. In the sixth season Buffy’s friend Willow, a witch, becomes addicted to magic and turns into a villain. Not only has Whedon repeatedly referred to this version of Willow as “Dark Willow,” but one of the Trio, Andrew, explicitly says in one episode that Willow has gone “Dark Phoenix.” Hence the “Dark Willow” arc is an explicit homage to X-Men’s “Dark Phoenix Saga,” one of the most celebrated storylines in the history of the superhero genre (see “Comics in Context” #134-135).

I believe that Buffy the character does fit the definition of superhero. Nonetheless, Buffy the television series (or movie or comics series) is not part of the superhero genre.

Earlier in his book Coogan stated that “If a character basically fits the mission-powers-identity definition, even with significant qualifications, and cannot be easily placed into another genre because of the preponderance of superhero conventions, the character is a superhero” (p. 40). This means that, according to Coogan’s rules, a character could fit the “MPI” definition yet still not be a superhero, if this character can indeed be “easily placed into another genre.” Therefore we must examine which genre provides the “preponderance” of genre conventions in the character’s series. We must not simply study the character, but the context in which that character exists. “Generic distinction,” Coogan asserts, “is a crucial element of the superhero. . . .” (p. 48).

Coogan correctly argues that “the Slayer is a hero-type that predates the superhero, fitting firmly within the larger horror genre and specifically within the vampire sub-genre” (p. 48), and cites Dr. Van Helsing from Bram Stoker’s Dracula as the first version of this hero-type in literature. Marvel buff Whedon credits Kitty Pryde as an inspiration for Buffy, but surely the blonde vampire slayer Rachel Van Helsing from Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula was a direct influence. Come to think of it, Tomb of Dracula’s small band of vampire hunters, led by an older British man, Quincy Harker, and including Rachel, resembles Buffy’s own vampire-hunting “Scooby Gang,” whose father figure is another Englishman, Giles. Coogan points out that “historically, the [vampire hunter] hero-type descends from actual vampire hunters, including the dhampir, the supposed male progeny of a vampire who is particularly able to detect and destroy vampires” (p. 48). That sounds like a sometime member of Harker’s band, Blade, who mother was attacked by a vampire while giving birth to him, and who wields stakes as weapons the same way that Buffy does. Janus, Dracula’s son in Tomb of Dracula who became his adversary, would also fall into this category of modern day dhampir.

Though Coogan concedes that “the writers of Buffy draw on superhero conventions,” he also points out that “They also make references to Scooby Doo and the show fits within the Scooby Doo formula” (p. 48). Well, it does to the extent that Buffy has a band of friends and allies, all of whom are young, who help her combat supernatural evil; in a stroke of metafictional wit, they even refer to themselves as “Scoobies.” But the Scooby Doo formula entails a solving a mystery, and Buffy doesn’t follow the detective story pattern. The Scooby formula also entails exposing the supposed supernatural menace as a fraud, but in Buffy supernatural evil is indeed real.

What Coogan is getting at is that the Buffy writers draw on conventions from various genres, including the superhero genre. Whedon has described Buffy as “My So-Called Life meets The X-Files”, and the show obviously draws on the high school/college comedy and “dramady” for its setting during the first four seasons. There are elements of science fiction, such as the cyborg Adam and robots like the Buffybot, and the Bondian superspy subgenre through the Initiative. Buffy is not just a vampire slayer, but a monster slayer, and thereby fits into a long line of characters going back to Gilgamesh and encompassing dragon slayers like St. George. Buffy is a television version of a bildungsroman, which is defied by the American Heritage Dictionary as “A novel whose principal subject is the moral, psychological, and intellectual development of a usually youthful main character.” Buffy’s fight scenes are obviously influenced by Asian martial arts movies. Wikipedia’s Buffy entry correctly observes that “The show blends different genres, including horror, martial arts, romance, melodrama, farce, comedy, and even, in one episode, musical comedy.” As noted on the BBC’s Buffy website, in the fifth season episode “Spiral,” the sequence in which Buffy, standing atop a moving RV, combats pursuing knights on horseback “is reportedly the Buffy production team’s homage to [the] classic Western film Stagecoach [1939].”

Combining elements of different genres is a Joss Whedon trademark; his television series Firefly and its movie spinoff Serenity (2005) are fusions of science fiction with the Western genre. Whedon was more explicit in incorporating Western elements than was Gene Roddenberry, who famously pitched Star Trek as “Wagon Train to the stars”.

But the “preponderant” genre conventions are those of the genre of supernatural horror and fantasy. Whedon has made that clear in his repeated descriptions of his original concept for Buffy, explaining that he took the genre formula of “the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie” and intended “to subvert that idea and create someone who was a hero.” (Billson, Anne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [BFI TV Classics series] pp. 24-25).

Whereas Coogan believes that Buffy is not a superhero, I’ve invented a special category for her, which I suspect reflects Whedon’s intentions for the character. To my mind, Buffy is a Displaced Superhero, which is to say that she is a superhero who operates outside the superhero genre. If someday, somehow, Whedon manages to do a Buffy-Batman or a Buffy-X-Men crossover, it will be interesting to see how well she fits into an actual superhero genre story.

Having defined what he considers to be a true superhero, what then does Coogan do with all the characters, like Buffy, who have super-powers but don’t fit his definition? Having declared that Buffy is not a “superhero” (one word), Coogan states that she is instead a “super hero” (two words), “as are heroic characters from other genres that have extraordinary abilities such as the Shadow, the Phantom, Beowulf, or Luke Skywalker. They are superior to ordinary human beings and ordinary protagonists of more realistic fiction in significant ways.” However, “they are not superheroes, that is they are not the protagonists of superhero genre narratives” (pages 48-49).

I see the point of Coogan’s distinction between “superheroes” (one word) and “super heroes” (two words), but his terminology presents problems. For one thing, the difference between the two terms does not work in spoken conversation, since you cannot hear whether there is a gap between the “super” and the “heroes.” Even in print (or on the computer screen), a simple typographical error can turn “super heroes” into “superheroes” or vice versa. Second, I understand that DC and Marvel have jointly trademarked both “superhero” (as one word) and “super hero” (as two words). DC and Marvel perceive no difference in meaning between the two forms of the term, so there is no legal distinction between them, either.

At this point Coogan does something in his book that delighted me: he quotes from the late literary critic Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (1957). I first encountered this book when I was in college and immediately recognized that his ideas could be applied to superhero fiction. (Another academic turned comics pro, Peter Gillis, paid tribute to Professor Frye by giving him a posthumous cameo in Defenders #133 [July 1984].)

As Coogan recounts, Frye identified the hero of myth as “superior in kind both to other men and to the environment.” Then there is what Frye terms the literary mode of romance. Among the definitions that the American Heritage Dictionary gives for “romance” are “A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place” and “The class of literature constituted by such tales”; this is what Frye meant by the term. According to Frye, the hero of romance is “superior in degree to other men and to his environment,” but is still a human being, who “moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended.” In the high mimetic mode, the hero is “superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment,” the hero of the low mimetic mode is “one of us,” and the hero of the ironic mode is “inferior in power or intelligence to ourselves” (Anatomy of Criticism, pgs. 33-34).

Coogan then declares that his “super heroes” (two words) are all “romance heroes.” Since, as he points out, nowadays the meaning of “romance” as love story is more common than its meaning as a tale of extraordinary adventure, calling these characters “romance heroes” would be confusing. So he calls them “super heroes” (two words) instead, which, as I’ve pointed out, is perhaps even more confusing.

Moreover, by stating that his “super heroes” (two words) are “romance heroes,” Coogan may, perhaps inadvertently, be leading readers to think that true superheroes are not romance heroes. But I think that Frye’s definition of the romance hero as a human being who is “superior in degree to other men and to his environment,” and who “moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended” is a nearly perfect description of the true superhero.

A superhero’s superpowers account for his superiority to his “environment.” This slight “suspension” of the laws of nature could account for what Coogan calls “superhero physics,” whereby superpowers, which do not exist in the real world, can exist in the Marvel Universe, for example. Hence, for example, thanks to the way that physics works in the DC Universe, Superman can fly, thereby demonstrating his superiority to an element of his environment, the law of gravity.

Frye’s description of the romance hero needs to be modified slightly to include those superheroes who are not literally human beings (like Superman, or the Silver Surfer, or the Vision), but all of them resemble Earth humans sufficiently, physically and psychologically, to be included. Also, as I’ve pointed out in previous installments, some superheroes, like Batman, lack actual super-powers; these characters are figuratively “superior in degree”: to other humans and to their environment.

Frye’s theory of modes also enables me to show further why Neil Gaiman’s Morpheus is not a superhero. Morpheus fits Frye’s description of the hero of myth, who is “superior in kind both to other men and to the environment.” A superhero is “superior in degree” to other humans, due to his powers, but is still a human being. Morpheus is “superior in kind” to humans: he is not human, but is one of the Endless, a different, higher form of being.

Elements of the superhero genre turn up at times in Gaiman’s Sandman, such as Element Girl and Doctor Dee (Justice League villain Doctor Destiny) in early issues, Batman and Clark Kent in “The Wake,” and the references to the Green Lantern and Superman mythos in Sandman: Endless Nights (see “Comics in Context” #17). But the predominant conventions in Gaiman’s Sandman are those of the fantasy genre.

Notice how Gaiman treats the character of Lyta Hall, who was the superheroine Fury in Roy Thomas’s Infinity, Inc. series. The “gravitational” pull of the fantasy genre is so strong in Sandman that Lyta’s superheroic identity is never mentioned in Gaiman’s series, nor her superpowers. Perhaps, however, Gaiman made an unspoken in joke by having Lyta (a. k. a. Fury) send the Furies of Greek mythology to punish Morpheus.

I also realized that the typical superhero is “superior in degree” to ordinary humans in his heroic identity, but in his alternate identity he is “one of us.” Superman is a romance hero, but as Clark Kent he is a “low mimetic” hero. Buffy is a romance hero when she acts as the Slayer, but when she is attending high school classes, she is acting as a low mimetic heroine.

While Morpheus is a hero of myth, different in kind than humans, Gaiman’s Sandman series can be read as the story of how Morpheus discovers he has an emotional capacity that is not so different from that of humankind. The series begins with Morpheus as a captive, reduced to being a “naked man” in a glass cage. He comes to acknowledge his friendship for the human Hob Gadling; he feels guilt and responsibility over the fate of his human son Orpheus. Ultimately Morpheus forfeits an aspect of his godhood by surrendering to death (or his sister Death, if you prefer). His successor, the new Dream, is somehow simultaneously Lyta’s human son Daniel and Morpheus himself reborn.

This is not to say that either Morpheus or the new Dream are superheroes. But notice that whereas a superhero typically has a double identity, one heroic and one that of a low mimetic “ordinary” human, the new Dream has a dual nature, making him simultaneously god and man. In the course of Sandman Morpheus discovers a “high mimetic” side to his nature, complete with a tragic flaw, enabling him to make himself vulnerable to death, sacrificing his life and becoming a tragic hero in the end.

Jack Bauer of television’s 24 presents an interesting case. On the surface he is a low mimetic hero, “one of us,” an operative of a United States government agency. Audience members who prefer realism to explicit fantasy would therefore be more likely to accept Bauer; thus Bauer also fits into the democratic ideal of American society, wherein everyone is equal.

In practice, however, Bauer is a high mimetic figure, “superior in degree to other men but not to his natural environment.” Bauer is unquestionably CTU’s top operative, who usually takes a leadership position in field operations. Bauer has saved America for five seasons going on six, and, though the show never actually says so out loud, it consistently presents Bauer as the only one who can defeat each season’s terrorist conspiracy. (Like Buffy or Anakin Skywalker or Neo in The Matrix, Bauer is, in effect, the Chosen One.) Since Bauer is not superior “to his natural environment,” he can be severely injured (as we have seen time and again on the show) or even killed. According to Frye, the hero of tragedy, such as Hamlet, is a high mimetic figure. This helps explain why each season of 24 usually ends tragically for Bauer: for example, his wife is killed, or he is forced into hiding, or he is captured and tortured by enemies.

Ultimately, though, I think that Bauer is a romance hero, “superior in degree to other men and to his environment,” who “moves in a world in which the ordinary laws of nature are slightly suspended.” Not only does he repeatedly outfight and outshoot his opponents, but he recovers from even severe injuries at unusual speed. In one season Bauer was tortured so badly that his heart actually stopped: he literally died and returned to life. Heck, the “suspension” of the “ordinary laws of nature” even explains how Bauer can drive back in forth in Los Angeles so quickly, as if its notorious traffic didn’t exist!

At present 24 and Heroes are on at the same time on Monday nights. One reason that I watch 24 rather than Heroes is that 24 feels to me much more like a heroic “romance” than Heroes, the supposed superhero series.

Until and unless I find a better term, I am going to call the heroes of romance (as Frye defines it) “megaheroes.” This category encompasses all the characters that Coogan calls “super heroes” (two words) as well as true “superheroes” (one word). Superheroes therefore form a subset within the larger category of megaheroes.

Having defined superheroes in his book, Coogan goes on to define supervillains. Here he takes what strikes me as a very different approach. In defining the superhero, Coogan went taken the approach that Superman is the first true superhero, who inaugurated the superhero genre. Therefore, Coogan sought to discover what distinguished Superman from his many megaheroic predecessors (drawing upon Judge Learned Hand’s perceptive court decision). In contrast, Coogan’s definition of the supervillain embraces characters from various different genres.

In Coogan’s view the supervillain long predates the first superhero (Superman) and the superhero genre. Indeed, Coogan counts the monsters Khumbaba and the Bull of Heaven, both slain by the title character of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, as supervillains, thereby making the super-villain concept at least over three thousand years old! Another of Coogan’s supervillains is the monster Grendel from the Old English poem Beowulf (circa 700-1000 A. D.). (When the Beowulf movie co-written by Neil Gaiman comes out this fall, I will surely have much more to say about this early romance.) Coogan also identifies as a supervillain Sherlock Holmes’s archenemy Professor Moriarty, who was introduced in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem” (1893). (Oddly, Coogan states that Moriarty only appears in “The Final Problem” and “is mentioned again only in the novel The Valley of Fear” [p. 71]. Rather, besides “The Final Problem,” Moriarty plays an active role, albeit behind the scenes, in The Valley of Fear, and is mentioned in five other Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle, most notably “The Adventure of the Empty House” [1903], which describes how Holmes survived his battle with Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls.)

In his introduction to Superhero, Coogan explains that its chapter on “The Supervillain” grew out of his contribution to The Supervillain Book, which was published last year by Visible Ink Press; I was another of The Supervillain Book’s contributing writers. The Supervillain Book likewise took the approach that supervillans are not restricted to the superhero genre, and included not just Professor Moriarty but James Bond villains like Blofeld and Goldfinger. When I was working on the book, I agreed with this idea.

However, now that I’ve read Coogan’s Superhero, I’m not so sure. I suspect that just as true superheroes represent a subset of the category metaheroes, there are true supervillains who are part of the overall category of what I’ll call megavillains. Next week I’ll explain the distinction.