Archetype [ahr-ki-tahyp] – noun: a typical example of something; the original model of something from which others are copied.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about Jack Kirby that touched on some his contributions to the Marvel Universe of comics, and it got me thinking. Jack was a visionary thinker, and many of his creations grew into modern-day icons – destined to be emulated, satirized, and reinterpreted in countless ways.

Many of the characters that he co-created, along with the creations of such other visionaries as Stan Lee, Joe Simon, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Gardner Fox, became the de facto mold for what people came to expect from comics. This mold would later be resisted by underground comic movements, innovative ‘darker’ takes on character properties, sequential art with underlying social statements, and biographical comics… but even in the resistance it continues to cultivate, the mark left by ‘traditional comic heroes’ is apparent.

Of course, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Incredible Hulk, they weren’t exactly pulling pearls out of thin air. Stories like Jekyl and Hyde had been around for centuries, with tales of the dual natures of mankind going as far back as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. When Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster came up with their Man of Steel, anyone familiar with the Greek myth of Heracles would attest that this wasn’t the first invincible ‘Hero of the People’ to go around kicking super-powered villain ass.

The stories that came to define the Golden and Silver Ages of Comic Books were really themselves just new spins on old ideas. Imaginative, well-crafted spins uniquely re-imagined on a 20th century canvas, but still largely patchwork products sewn from the fabric of all the similar stories that preceded them.

But this isn’t what I was thinking about. At least not in the super-big-picture-all-stories-throughout-history-build-on-each-other blah blah intertextuality blah sort of sense.

A lot of these characters and stories don’t need to be traced back to antiquity to find the earlier incarnations that inspired them. Most Golden-to-Silver Age characters – as influential as they would be on our modern ideas of ‘comic books’ – owe much of their own existence to the pulp magazine and newspaper comic strip heroes of the twenties and thirties.

Those thoroughly immersed in the geeky waters of comic book fandom are generally familiar with the legacy and impact of the pulps and early 20th century comic strips. Some characters from the era cemented themselves in such strong iconography that their names are widely known today, even outside of the comic reading populace. Zorro, Buck Rogers, and Conan the Barbarian would fall into this camp.

That same widespread audience might be less likely, however, to draw parallels between the mythos of Batman (created in 1939) and that of Zorro, (created 1919) the wealthy Spanish nobleman who dons a mask and black garb to defend innocents from the corrupt.  Not that I’m implying Bob Kane and Bill Finger shamelessly lifted the concept of Zorro – Kane has openly stated that Zorro was an influence in his original imagining of the caped crusader. This isn’t a closely guarded secret by any means, as is seen in the panel below from Batman # 0 by Doug Moench.

Similarly, the same general public that would recognize the name Conan the Barbarian and identify it largely with a younger, less fluent future Governor of California, would likely be lost if you sparked up a conversation about Kull of Atlantis. Kull was the earlier creation of original Conan author Robert E. Howard, a character whose heroic barbarism and wanton sexual exploits would form the basis of its own sub-genre of pulp magazines and literature.

I think it’s important to continue to acknowledge the cultural contributions made by those protagonists of pulp magazines and classic comic strips that have fallen from the collective consciousness. If not their lasting effects on entertainment in general, then at least their influence on (what are typically seen as their successors) comic books.

Take Doc Savage for instance, a name cited from time to time as a pop culture reference directed towards ‘in the know’ audience members. In the comic book world, Doc Savage has maintained a spotty presence over the years; most recently, he appeared alongside Batman as part of DC Comics’ First Wave miniseries, though he has also had his own limited run titles with Dark Horse, Millennium Comics, Marvel, and Street & Smith. Savage represents a man who has, through science, been pushed to the pinnacle of human achievement, and through it all retained his moral obligations to both his country and his fellow man.

This may sound a little familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of traditional superhero motif, like, say, that of Spider-Man or Captain America.

To approach a (comparatively) more obscure classic character property, Mandrake the Magician could be seen as an early antecedent to the DC Universe lexicon of modern, supernaturally powered superheroes – or in Marvel terms, as an early antecedent to Dr. Strange. Created by Lee Falk, who would later create the character of ‘the Phantom’, Mandrake could cast illusions with particular gestures of his hands – an ability he used to fight everything from common thugs to evils from other dimensions.

Other pulp/early American comic strip heroes worthy of note included The Shadow, The Phantom Detective, Flash Gordon, Solomon Kane, and The Spider, among many others.

The likes of Jack Kirby and Gardner Fox should never be disparaged for their contributions to comics as they exist today, so long as credit is also given to the creators of the pulps and comic strips of the early 20th Century for laying the groundwork.

I guess we could also give credit to Ovid, but let’s stick relatively contemporary here.

It’s pretty nifty that the comic industry itself continues to recognize the impact of these original characters in the form of new comics telling new (or retelling old) stories of their adventures.

It’s also neat (and worthy of mention) that a lot of the titles I’ve mentioned have live action movie adaptations in the works, like Doc Savage and Mandrake the Magician. and Solomon Kane has already been released in France, and you can view an English trailer for it here. There’s even a remake of The Shadow in the works – by Sam Raimi, no less.

Let’s all just keep our fingers crossed on the casting of that last one.

-Written by Kevin de Vlaming