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January 13

by Kimberly Van Ness, Wishbone Company member and actor in the ensemble for Spandex

Tuesday marked our third meeting for Spandex wherein we continued Mondays discussion about the life and times of superheroes.

(Some tidbits from Monday’s discussion that were not included in the previous post: Sam’s truly epic cataloguing of the 35 most memorable comic book villains of which we all thought the Scarlet Witch was pretty awesome, an acapella rendition of the ‘Muppet Babies’ theme song, and me getting all up in arms about the apparent need for all female superheroes to have the BMI of toothpicks until Brandon explained that as crime fighters, they probably should be in relatively good shape.)

We started off the meeting with a little historical recap from Laurie about one of the earliest superheroes, Mandrake the Magician who, as you may be surprised to find out, was NOT shaped like one of those crying baby root things in Harry Potter but rather like a magician who took his mustache styling advice from Rhett Butler. Mandrake the Magician’s power was to ‘gesture hypnotically’ and cause his subjects to see illusions.

(Fancy, but I think controlling metal is still my favorite power so far...)

We also discussed the book Seduction of the Innocent which was written in 1954 by Fredric Wertham as a cry for censorship in the comic book industry. His book lead to the development of the Comics Code Authority which was responsible for censoring the content in comic books. They did away with conflicted superheroes, opting instead for black and white characters that were either all good or all evil and decided that all villains must receive punishment for evil doings.

I will leave you with this thought from Sam, who posed the question to us, “If you had Tupac, Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z, who would be Superman, who would be Batman and who would be Spiderman and why?” Here is his answer:

“So, take Tupac, Biggie Smalls and Jay-Z and try to match them up with Superman Spider-man and Batman. Biggie is the tightest rhymer of the group and if you consider rap as a genre that highlights bitches, gats and guns, then no one does it better than Biggie - which by my reasoning would make him Superman. Tupac is the least likely to shoot anyone of the three, the most interested in ridding the streets of crime and generally the most socially conscious - making him Batman. And Spiderman has the least skill of the three heroes, but has made the most out of it - leaving him as Jay-Z.”

Tonight we delve into improvisation!