| |
|
Had no idea where to put this, so I figured I'd put it where we were discussing recent Superman comics...
I've heard about this book by Alvin Schwartz, which Alan Moore mentions as a major watermark book in comics history. Neil Gaiman mentions the book in an otherwise boring article about why people like Superman so much as opposed to other super-heroes; but this paragraph from that article is what's interesting. Apparently Schwartz was the first, pre-Moore, pre-Morrison, etc. to posit the idea that the really famous, universally recognized superhereoes, like other powerful icons, have become living entities in and of themselves. (then again, if the book was written a decade ago, maybe it doesn't pre-date Morrison talking about tulpas regarding superheroes. the article doesn't mention the details of the tantalizing bit at the end where author Schwartz (not Julie S.) describes his own encounter with a guy channeling Superman (which sounds not unlike Morrison's encounter with a guy channeling Superman years ago at a comic con.).
>> About a decade ago, Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips in the 1940s and ‘50s, published one of the great Odd Books of our time. In An Unlikely Prophet, reissued in paperback this spring, Schwartz writes that Superman is real. He is a tulpa, a Tibetan word for a being brought to life through thought and willpower. Schwartz also says a Hawaiian kahuna told him that Superman once traveled 2,000 years back in time to keep the island chain from being destroyed by volcanic activity. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, but it does sound like a job for Superman – all in a day’s work for a guy who can squeeze coal into diamonds. Schwartz then tells of his own encounter with Superman in a New York taxi, when he learned firsthand that Superman’s cape is, in fact, more than mere fabric. |
|
|
