Clothes make the man

Ok, so this is happening a lot: People dressed up as Superman (and super heroes in general) are being arrested. It's getting to be something of a pattern. There's this guy:

On Tuesday, he was lying on the sidewalk, which, not surprisingly even in this city, caught the attention of a police officer.
“I am just tired, I am not going anywhere,” prosecutors quoted him as telling the police. “I am Superman, the Governorator, ” he said, according to a law official.
He then ran into the street. Vehicles swerved around him, the complaint said. He “flailed” his arms, refusing to be handcuffed, it said.
And so that was how he landed in Judge Alvin Yearwood’s courtroom, sitting on a hard bench at about 11 a.m. on Wednesday, with a hole in his tights, as prostitution and drunk driving suspects were called up to appear.
“This was the company that Superman was keeping,” said John Marshall Mantel, a freelance photographer for The New York Times who saw him there.

I'm not sure I understand the reason behind referring to the guy as Superman. The "freelance photographer" is only one of the people who do this sort of thing. Because he wears the costume, he is the character. At least that's the logic here. This is a tough subject for me to work through, because there are a lot of facets to it. Lots to account for.

For instance, by putting on a Santa Claus outfit, a person kind of sort of really does become Santa Claus--at least in the eyes of the kids who believe in him. And there is something similar going on with Superman. And with the disney characters. The Superman (Josh Boltinghouse) at the Metropolis Superman Celebration isn't allowed to appear out of Character. He displays his own face (as does Superman--Mark Waid's Superman: Birthright has a great take on why this is necessary; Waid's a guy who really has thought all of this through), and because of his contract, kids who attend the festival will see the same face on Superman for many years.

A guy I interviewed here in Bloomington told me about the day he realized there was no Superman. He told it just like you might imagine a kid relating the story of how he learned there was no Santa Claus. It was the differences from his idealized version and the guy standing in front of him in a truck stop that clued him in. This guy had a wedding ring, a beer gut, and a moustache. None of which the Superman in his imagination possessed.

So what, exactly is going on with comments like the one by the photographer? Why must we conflate the man with the costume? Another example:

Superman and Batman took on New York's Finest last night in an epic Crossroads of the World battle that left the Caped Crusader in cuffs. (from the article linked in my previous post)

The costume is the most important symbolic aspect of Superman. Are these quotations telling us that by appropriating the symbol, we appropriate the identity? Or do they reveal that Superman is only what we make of him? That we control his image with what we do, so we should be careful what we do, especially when dressed as him?

The guy who dresses as Superman in Confessions of a Superhero probably has a lot to say about this. It was kind of appropriate how he as Superman was sort of the leader of all the other people who dress in costume outside the Chinese Theater in LA.

The Cape

One thing that keeps coming up is the importance of Superman's cape. Alvin Schwartz insists that the cape is indestructible (in his book An Unlikely Prophet), and the cape appears to be the most common item donned by children when they pretend to be Superman. it's iconic and essential. You can't be Superman without the cape.

That being said, you can buy a reproduction (so is there a real one out there somewhere?) at a comic shop in cincinatti for $295. The article and shop in question (the shop's name is Up Up and Away, which is what I wanted to call this blog) are promoting Free Comic Book day, which is coming up in a week and a half. In case somebody beside me is actually reading this, and that person doesn't know, Free Comic Book Day is exactly what it sounds like. You go to a comics shop and they give you a few free comics that publishers send to the expressley for this pupose.

The cape is one of the two places where the S-Shield is featured. Its color scheme on the cape varies. But since Superman wasn't the guy's name on his home planet, and yet the S-Shield was explained to be part of the blanket or something that he had when he arrived on earth, people started to wonder what the S was all about. So, somebody came up with an explanation, one that involved creating a new language, Kryptonese (later, Kryptonian--they're #'s 10 and 11 on the list of languages on the site I linked). Kryptonian is becoming pretty common in tattoos, such as in this guy's tattoo of his name:

What's weird is that in that Kryptonian alphabet, there's no symbol like the one on the S-shield. The closest is the equivalent for the letter S. I seem to recall that the S-shield stood for the family, the House of El, if memory serves. I'll have to find out.

RANDOM STUFF

I suppose it's inevitable that the world turns into a musical someday. Half the world is busy lip-synching to some song or other on youtube. So why not revive the old Superman broadway show, with a new book?

This one's come up a few times now. Not sure what to make of it yet. Evidently it's in answer to a question about why the crime rate never ends if Superman is so great.

At long last, action-hero-pant-wearing day has the green light. In the UK, anyway. And it supports charity. Evidently, it's not a day when everybody wears a Superman costume they bought at the story; they simply put their underwear outside their trousers. There will be stickers, and the article makes use of the word "whilst." How very English of it.

A guy proposes to his girlfriend while he's wearing a superman outfit.

"She calls me her Superman because I look after her and make sure she doesn't do anything wrong."

That's not the first time this has happened. The Superman guy in Confessions of a Superhero does the same thing. Then gets married in his costume underneath the Superman statue in Metropolis, IL.

There's something called the superman punch.

I don't watch the show HEROES. I found this reference to Superman in the most recent episode. Are there lots of these sorts of things in the show?

You're noble like Superman, you believe in truth and justice like Superman. You're a little fascist like Superman.

Evidently this is a villain calling a hero superman in an attempt to make the hero out to be a fascist.