This is the third part of a four part essay dealing with posthuman superheroes. The superhero universe is full of characters that exhibit a wide range of posthuman features. With their abilities of shapeshifting and embodiment they are forms without form; characters which exhibit endless possibility and multiplicity. Using the work of Ihab Hassan, and the idea of embodiment as defined by Robert Pepperell, and Katherine Hayles, part one provides an overview of posthuman theory which include evolution of the human through mutation; and the idea of embodiment which theorises that the mind, body, and environment are a continuous entity. It then identifies a number of superheroes as having posthuman bodies and genders.
Part One: Posthuman Bodies and Genders provides an overview of posthuman theory which include evolution of the human through mutation; and the idea of embodiment which theorises that the mind, body, and environment are a continuous entity. It then identifies a number of superheroes as having posthuman bodies and genders
Part two ‘Performing Gender’ theorises Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs as a negative ideal of a posthuman subject and analyses Martian Manhunter performing gender in two issues of Justice League Task Force.
Part four ‘Coming Off The Page’ investigates the growing real world emergence of the posthuman and the possibility of fostering a real world 'heroic imagination'.
Comic writers Mark Millar, Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis have explored the concept of the Posthuman in the titles The Authority, Ultimate X-Men, The Invisibles, New X-Men, The Ultimates, and Stormwatch. Geoff Klock in his article ‘X-Men, Emerson, Gnosticism’ characterises Millar’s run on The Ultimates as exhibiting a ‘pessimistic post-humanism’ (2004). As a term in superhero narratives, posthuman is used in a straight forward evolutionary sense. The villain, Sabretooth, sums this up:
We’re monsters… I don’t dress it up with fancy names like mutant or post-human. Man was born crueller than apes and we we’re born crueller than men. It’s just the natural order of things (Millar, Kubert, Raney & Derenick, and Thibert et al, 2006:305, emphasis in original).
The X-Men villain, Magneto, pushes the point further in his rant against humans:
Man is a parasite upon mutant resources. He eats our food, breathes our air and occupies land which evolution intended Homo Superior to inherit. Naturally, our attacks upon your power bases will continue until you deliver this world to its rightful owners. But your replacements grow impatient (Millar, Adam Kubert & Andy Kubert, and Thibert with Miki, 2006:10, emphasis in original).
In Ultimate X-Men naming is a factor in becoming, or being represented as, posthuman, providing a new way of differentiating the posthuman from the human. As Professor Xavier explains to Storm of their monikers: ‘You’ve just been rebaptized as a post-human being… a name which describes your own skill and personality as opposed to those of a long dead ancestor’ (Millar, Adam Kubert & Andy Kubert, and Thibert with Miki, 2006:24, emphasis in original).
The DC Comics shapeshifter, Shift, also exhibits posthuman qualities. Shift is, for want of a better word, the son of the DC hero Metamorpho. Shift is a more evolved version of Metamorpho because he has the ability to absorb elements from outside himself, bypassing Metamorpho’s restrictions of only being able to use the elements contained in the human body. Naming himself “Shift” mirrors the naming of the X-Men in that, as Shift’s love interest Indigo says: ‘it complements your new persona as a shape-shifter’ (Winick et al, 2004b:108). Shift also uses his shape to express mood, feelings, and opinions, ostensibly exhibiting a body language.
Mystique: Shapeshifting Mutant
‘She, in fact, may no longer be a she, but the subject of quite another story: a subject in process, a mutant, the other of the Other, a post-Woman embodied subject cast in female morphology who has already undergone an essential metamorphosis’ (Braidotti, 2002:11).
The posthuman is enmeshed in notions of the body and the shapeshifter is defined by notions of what the body can do. Yet in the same instance the shapeshifter’s body subverts its own definition by continually doing what a common body cannot. The shapeshifter necessarily exhibits, represents, and makes clear, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance. The shapeshifter as representative of posthuman gender also plays into Halberstam and Livingstone’s idea of someness, with some number of genders being available to assume. This virtually, though not necessarily dictates, that performance accompany the shapeshifting.
The shapeshifting mutant, Mystique, can also be described as being of posthuman gender. Her shape shifting ability raises questions about her original gender which has never been positively established. Whether Mystique only outwardly appears as the gender she exhibits or actually changes her body completely, i.e.: also her internal organs, is not known although she is able to move organs around her body. Her most common form with which she is associated is female, and she exhibits more female capabilities than male, not the least being childbirth, although in X-Men: True Friends #3 (Nov. 1999) she appears as a man named Mr Raven, raising the idea that perhaps at the onset of her mutation she was male.
When a shapeshifter changes bodies do they change gender? Do they change sex? Do their sexual organs only change on the surface of the body? The answer I would posit to all the questions above is, yes. How many sexes, genders, and therefore roles, can a shapeshifter occupy? Some. The potentiality of their form gives them the ability to be any gender/sex. They are engaged in a discourse with limits that can never be reached.
Rosi Braidotti writes that the body ‘is an interface, a threshold, a field of intersecting material and symbolic forces… a surface where multiple codes (race, sex, class, age) are inscribed’ (2002:25). Braidotti’s quote describes Mystique’s body as it represents a perfect interface; a surface of codes; a unique character able to assume a multiplicity – some number – of intersecting forms, roles, genders, sexes, races, classes, and ultimately identities. The role of the shapeshifter is dangerous to occupy as they disturb the familiar and the known. Barkan writes that ‘a subject whose essence is instability and mysterious change does not lend itself to classical orderliness’ (1986: xiii).
Mystique is one character, if not the only character, whose origin story while being hinted at, has not been fully revealed. In an industry where origin stories are continually revealed and rewritten Mystique's missing origin story is an anomaly. A character’s origin is seen and read at the same time, thus becoming known to the reader/viewer. Without a known origin Mystique has no fixed point of reference. She is a character built upon a non-existent place and story. The comfort of knowing how she “came to be” is removed. She simply independently exists. With an identity built on instability, a missing origin, Mystique is able to become other yet remains Mystique
Ontologically the shapeshifter promotes the idea of an unstable definition of the self, the idea of multiple selves, and thus the endless possibility of other ways of being. The shapeshifter’s performance of multiple roles, and as a metaphor, spreads further than just form. Mystique’s shapeshifting ability facilitates her to occupy a range of subject positions in her thirty plus years of comic existence. She is, and has been at one time or another, a mother, a lover, a wife, a stepmother, a step-grandmother, a detective, a model, a widow, a spy, a government operative, and an outlaw. Her allegiances are never completely known or stable, aligning herself with ‘good’ or ‘evil’ as it suits her or as circumstances dictate. She has been punished for not declaring her allegiance to patriarchy, or a defining sexuality, which also makes her posthuman. Mystique will never become a hero in the traditional sense until she renounces her queerness. Defying traditional hero and villain stereotypes, neither heterosexual nor good mother, she spurns hetero-normative relationships, adopts children, and is a leader. In contrast, the subject positions the classic heroes such as Superman, Batman, or indeed the Martian Manhunter, occupy are narrow to say the least. Mystique is:
capable of defeating the notion of fixed bodily form, of visible, recognizable, clear, and distinct shapes as that which marks the contour of the body. She is morphologically dubious (Braidotti, 2002:80).
Mystique’s unlimited potentiality threatens everything that is controlled, stable, and individual; the idea of the human itself.
Not an industry to rest on its laurels, the figure of the shapeshifter has itself evolved in superhero comics to become, what I believe, is the ideal posthuman subject: the shapeshifting cyborg – embodied by The Authority’s, The Engineer.
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The Engineer (Ellis, Hitch, and Neary, 2000a:28) |
The Engineer: Shapeshifting Cyborg
The most visible and recognisable figure of posthumanism in the superhero narrative is the cyborg. Their numbers are vast in the superhero narrative and include, but are not limited to, Cyborg (Teen Titans), Midnighter (The Authority), Robotman (Doom Patrol), Wolverine (with his adamantium skeleton), Fuji (Stormwatch), Iron Man (with his artificial heart attachment), Forge, and the X-Men villains, The Marauders. At base level, with his numerous bat-gadgets, Batman can be said to be the first superhero cyborg. Frank Miller took this to extremes in The Dark Knight Returns where he depicted Batman using an armoured suit powered by Gotham City
The Engineer, a.k.a. Angela Spica, is perhaps the most telling, and even primary example of the posthuman in the superhero narrative. A former physicist and technologist, The Engineer, is a shapeshifting cyborg. Instead of prosthetics being grafted or attached to her body she has ‘nine pints of liquid machinery’ for blood (Ellis, Hitch, and Neary, 2000a:84). This liquid machinery is full of intelligent microscopic nanotech devices and by no means confined to her arteries. The liquid exists both as a part of her internal and external anatomy. Through her thoughts Angie uses this liquid to create anything she can think of including full body armour and jet engines. She is able to do this, because, as she says: ‘You can fit every book on earth into a drop of my blood’ (Ellis, Hitch, and Neary, 2000b:50). She is even able to spread and transform this liquid nanotech machinery into eighty-two fully workable bodies. This however is about as much as she can manage before her ‘personality starts to disassociate’ (Millar, Weston & Quitely, and Leach & Scott, 2002:31). Capable of multiple selves who operate independently and are themselves capable of multiple shapes, she actually shifts her shape to (an)other that is still her(self). She is not only posthuman in her representation of a cyborg, she is also connected to the environment, her body (anatomy) extending further than her identifiable body. This is embodied in her ability to create multiple selves, integrate with other machines, and to perceive environmental changes around her and around the world:
The longer I wear the liquid machinery, the longer I develop an invisible web of atom-sized machine sensors around me. A sort of security perfume… I get very sensitive to environmental changes (Ellis, Hitch, and Neary, 2000b:14).
She’s so sensitive to environmental changes in fact that they cause her to feel ill, not surprising considering the sensors are a part of her physiology, while also existing apart from her. The Engineer’s abilities recall Pepperell’s second and third points of his Posthuman Concept of Consciousness, those being: ‘The human body is not separate from its environment’ and ‘Consciousness, body and environment are all continuous’. Thus The Engineer is the synthesis of several strands of posthuman theory. The Engineer is also becoming the more she finds out about her abilities, and it the more she finds out, the more she is able to become, in a continual evolution. As a cyborg shapeshifter, The Engineer allows linkages and identifications as woman/other/animal/hybrid, and presents a posthuman ideal where she has evolved enough to decide how to evolve. When reminiscing about her former life, how chaotic and banal, though attractive it was, she comes to the conclusion that: ‘I’m not Angie anymore. I’m The Engineer’ (Ellis, Hitch, and Neary, 2000a:104). In renaming herself in the same manner as the X-Men characters in New X-Men, she confirms her posthuman identity.
Embodied Superheroes: Jack Hawksmoor, Jean Grey, Shift
The characters Jack Hawksmoor, Shift, Jean Grey, and characters of The Invisibles, also exhibit posthuman qualities. Jack Hawksmoor from The Authority (and previously Stormwatch), has been surgically enhanced by aliens, becoming ‘homo urbanus, one of a kind: city human. Human designed specifically to live in cities’ (Ellis, Hamner, and Story, 2002:148). Hawksmoor can communicate with cities as sentient beings and get them to help him in his superheroic endeavours, while also providing him with superhuman strength. He can also disperse his body into the urban environs, effectively becoming continuous with his body, consciousness, and the environment. In this sense he is also a shape-shifter.
The telekinetic X-Men member, Jean Grey (a.k.a. Marvel Girl and Phoenix), is another posthuman subject. In New X-Men #128 (2005) Professor Xavier and Jean experiment with her growing telekinetic power. Jean explains that all her senses seem to be melting together:
Jean: It’s like I’m feeling more of everything… but it all melts together. It’s not just sight or sound… it’s all of my senses at once, sort of rippling out through my surroundings…
Professor Xavier: Your mind’s ability to precisely operate matter extends far beyond your physical body and deeply into your environment. But… I think there could be more to it…
(Morrison, and Kordey, 2005:39-40).
Indeed there is more to it. When Xavier touches a fork Jean is levitating with her mind in mid-air, Jean can feel Xavier’s pulse through the fork. Again in a posthuman idea, Jean’s consciousness extends beyond her body into the fork and surrounding environment, effectively exemplifying that she is embedded as part of that environment.
Read Part One: Posthuman Bodies and Genders
Read Part Two: Performing Gender
Read Part Four: Coming Off the Page
Reference
Babcock, J. (02/01/2007 ) ‘An Interview with Grant Morrison, from the pages of Arthur Magazine’, www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=1644 (Accessed 11 Oct 2007).
Barkan, L. (1986) The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism, New Haven Yale University
Braidotti, R. (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Malden
Ellis, W. (w), Hamner, C. (p) and Story, K. (i) ‘Orbital’ in Millar, M. (w), Weston, C. & Quitely, F. (p) and Leach, G. & Scott, T. (i) (2002) The Authority: Earth Inferno and Other Stories, [Collecting 2000, 2001 The Authority v1#17-20, 2000 The Authority Annual, and 2001 Wildstorm Summer Special] New York: Wildstorm Productions.
Ellis, W. (w), Hitch, B. (p) and Neary, P. (i) (2000a) The Authority: Relentless, [Collecting 1999 The Authority v1 #1-8] New York: Wildstorm Productions.
Ellis, W. (w), Hitch, B. (p) and Neary, P. (i) ‘Outer Dark’ in Ellis, W. & Millar, M (w), Hitch, B. & Quitely, F. (p) and Neary, P. & Scott, T. with Williams, S. et al (i) (2000b) The Authority: Under New Management, [Collecting 2000 The Authority v1 #9-16] New York: Wildstorm Productions.
Millar, M. (w), Kubert, A., with Raney, T. & Derenick, T. (p), and Thibert, A. et al (i) ‘Return to Weapon X, Part Six of Six’ Ultimate X-Men #12, in Millar, M (w), Kubert, A., et al (p), and Thibert, A. et al (2006) Ultimate X-Men: Ultimate Collection Vol. 1, [Collecting 2001, 2002, 2006 Ultimate X-Men #1-12, Ultimate X-Men #1/2], New York: Marvel Publishing.
Morrison, G. (w), Kordey, I. (art) ‘New Worlds’ New X-Men #128 in Morrison, G. (w), Kordey, I. et al (p), and Kordey, I. et al (i) (2005) New X-Men Vol. 3: New Worlds, [Collecting 2002 New X-Men #127-133] New York: Marvel Publishing pp. 27-50.
Morrison, G. (w), Quitely, F. with Grant, K. (p) and Avalon Studios (i) ‘Kid Ω’ New X-Men #134 in Morrison, G. (w), Quitely, F. with Grant, K. (p) and Avalon Studios (i) (2005) New X-Men Vol. 4: Riot at Xavier’s, [Collecting 2003 New X-Men #134-138] New York: Marvel Publishing.
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