SUPERHEROES 605
as a facet of the Riot Grrl movement. Th at movement was pervaded by the dominant
themes echoed in Th e Summer of Love : alienation, frustration, betrayal, and cynicism,
couched in the trappings of a specifi c time. Th ough much more complex than this list of
themes might suggest, both the movement and Drechsler’s work echo those themes.
Drechsler has subsequently removed herself from the intensity of the work but not
from its honesty. In a 2002 interview, Drechsler remarked on both Th e Summer of Love
and Daddy’s Girl, stating, “I fi nd it very hard to reread those stories and that makes me
wonder how hard it is for other people to read (and see) and if that was the best way
of presenting the material. I guess my sense of propriety drifts around, depending on
where I am at any given moment. When I wrote those stories, I was much angrier at life
than I am now, and much unhappier, so maybe I had less to lose? Or maybe it felt more
necessary to slam people in the face with that stuff. I don’t know for sure. (aka Simon).”
Drechsler has done very little comics work since Th e Summer of Love , concentrating on
her commercial art career.
See also: Feminism; Memoir/Slice-of-Life Th emes; Underground and Adult Comics
Selected Bibliography: A.K.A. Simon. “Reality: the Debbie Drechsler Interview.”
(2002). Comics Bulletin, http://www.comicsbulletin.com/nuclear/98705880048391.
htm; “Debbie Dreschler Interview.” Th e Comics Journal (249) (December 2002),
http://archives.tcj.com/249/i_drechsler.html; Drechsler, Debbie. Th e Summer of Love.
Montreal: D & Q Press, 2002.
Diana Green
SUPERHEROES. Th e superhero is the protagonist of the superhero genre, which began
with the appearance of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman in Action Comics #1
(cover date June 1938). By 1942 the term superhero was in use to describe comic book
stories of heroic fi gures who wore colorful costumes and possessed superpowers.
Parodies of the genre, which indicate an acceptance of the genre by both producers
and consumers, emerged as early as 1940, with the Red Tornado by Sheldon Mayer,
followed by Supersnipe and Plastic Man the next year.
Th e genre’s immediate sources come from three adventure-narrative fi gures: the
science-fi ction superman, beginning with Frankenstein (1818); the dual-identity
avenger-vigilante, beginning with Nick of the Woods (1835); and the pulp ubermensch,
beginning with Ta r z a n (1912). Th e science-fi ction superman is typically a tragic fi g-
ure endowed with superior abilities by science who poses the threat of either tyranny
over or evolutionary replacement of the human race. Infl uential science- fi ction
superman novels include H. G. Well’s Invisible Man (1897) and Th e War of the Worlds
(1898), and Th e Food of the Gods (1904); J. D. Beresford’s Th e Hampdenshire Wonder
(1911); and Olaf Stapledon’s Odd John (1936). Edgar Rice Burroughs created one of
the few heroic models of the science fi ction superman with John Carter (1912). Th e
most infl uential of these fi gures were Hugo Danner, hero of Philip Wylie’s Gladiator
