American Folklore and Superheroes

Better people than I have made the connection between superheroes and mythology.  Superman is famously an analogy for Judeo-Christian figures Moses and Jesus.  There are also characters like Thor and Hercules, who are taken straight from Norse and Greek mythology respectively, retaining their basic characteristics and backstories mostly as is because Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were in a bit of a creative slump I guess.  No disrespect, everyone has bad days; it’s nothing to be ashamed of.  Strangely, superheroes are an almost uniquely American concept.  The most famous non-American superhero created by non-American people is John Constantine and he’s just a normal guy who does magic stuff sometimes.  Despite America’s relative youth as a nation it has managed to build up a handful of its own legends, so it’s fitting that they should have an impact on superhero stories.

•  Captain America is Rip Van Winkle
• It’s fitting again, that the most American superhero imaginable has ties to a classic American tale.  In Washington Irving’s 1819 short story the titular Rip Van Winkle goes out into the woods to hide from his nagging wife, where he gets drunk and falls asleep, you know, like heroes do.  He stays asleep long enough for the American Revolution to take place.  When he wakes up he is confused by the world around him.  He finds that his wife is dead, along with his friends who have fallen in combat, and his children have grown up without him.  Similarly, Cap plunged into the icy waters of the North Atlantic while saving hundreds of lives from Nazi bombs, you know, like lazy bums do.  He’s cryogenically frozen for years, missing out on the fifties and some other stuff, I guess; Marvel’s rolling timeline confuses me.  When Cap is unfrozen he is confused by the world around him.  He finds that his old Army buddies and loved ones are either dead or incredibly old.  Did I mention the part where Rip Van Winkle’s best friend is a brainwashed assassin with a robot arm?  I guess that doesn’t have anything to do with Captain America though.
• Hawkgirl is Evangeline
• I’ll confess, I’d never heard of Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie before I did research for this, but I saw it with other American folklore figures on Wikipedia and it felt familiar.  The poem, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and great name haver, is about Evangeline, who is separated from her paramour, Gabriel, in the Expulsion of the Acadians.  She spends the rest of her life searching America for Gabriel, sometimes coming near him without realizing it.  It’s like a Pink Panther cartoon if it were a sad love story, which it kind of is when you think about it.  Eventually, Evangeline settles in Philadelphia where she tends to the sick and poor.  There she finds Gabriel, who is diseased, and dies in her arms.  It reminded me of Hawkgirl and Hawkman.  In certain versions of their origin they are lovers who are cursed to be reborn then watch each other die over and over again.  Both stories are tragic romances about a couple who are destined to come together and then be separated again and again.
• Steel is John Henry
• The connection between Steel and John Henry is about as subtle as a steel nail driven through Slim Shady’s eyelid.  Steel’s real name is John Henry Irons.  John Henry used a hammer to drive steel into rock; Steel uses a hammer to fight bad guys.  John Henry died in a legendary battle of man versus machine when a steam powered hammer threatened his job; Steel’s job was to make machines that killed people before he faked his own death and became a Superman stand-in after the Man of Steel died-ish while fighting Doomsday.  John Henry is the basis of a pretty good Johnny Cash song and Steel is the basis of a really bad Shaquille O’Neil movie.  They’d be the same basic person if it weren’t ridiculous to base an engineer on a man who died fighting a machine.