Socrates as Comic Book Villain

Socrates as Comic Book Villain?: Selected Graphic

Representations of Socrates

Lex Luther, the Joker, and … Socrates? Surprising at

it may seem, in two recent comic books Socrates has appeared

as a villain, and Socratic philosophy informs the larger

conflicts in both of these works. In each work, the

representation of Socrates can be seen as a moment in the

larger reception of the figure of Socrates, a personage who

has fascinated authors from Plato and Xenophon to Jacques-

Louis David and I.F. Stone. This paper examines how these

works represent Socrates graphically and how Socratic

philosophy informs the plot, characters, and themes of the

texts. The character of Socrates is portrayed ambivalently

in each work – while he is the antagonist to the main

characters, he is also a conduit to the process of self-

reflection, and a spur to living a meaningful life.

In “The Unexamined Life”, a recent issue of the DC

comics Superman/Batman series, one of our first views of

Socrates is a panel in which he declaims, “ho de anexetastos bios

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ou biotos anthropoi” (Pl. Ap. 38a5-6). This phrase, “The

unexamined life is not worth living” (which is not

translated until the end of the comic when he is defeated by

Superman), signals the primary theme of introspection in

this comic. This work, written by Joe Kelly with art by

Scott Kolins, examines the characters of Superman and Batman

as Socrates’ power causes them to question their heroic

motivation. Both individuals have alter-egos that allow for

play between their public and superhero personae (how can you

separate Clark Kent’s Kansas upbringing from the near-

infinite power of Superman?), and the comic explores the

inherent tension between these personae. The narrative

begins with a contentious meeting between Superman and

Batman as each man questions the motives and results of the

other’s work. They are interrupted by a crime in Gotham

City as three armored cars collide and spill their contents

in the streets. It is at this moment that they first see

the figure of Socrates (figure #1). His skeletal appearance

and tattered robe (possibly a take-off on the Greek himation

cloak) suggest someone who has risen from the dead. He acts

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much like the historical Socrates, asking a series of

questions to Superman (one thinks of the Socrates’

description of himself as a

gadfly, cf. Plato Ap. 30e).

After he touches Superman,

Superman mysteriously loses

his superpowers. Because of

this change, one may wish to

pay more attention to the

questions (“Can one ever be

that which he is not?”, “Who

do you think you are?”). At

first, Superman humorously

attempts to participate in the Socratic dialectic (“I’m

Superman which means whatever it is you do…? Don’t…” and

“You don’t talk to people much do you?”), but after he is

touched by Socrates he disappears from public view for a

number of weeks.

Can Superman exist without his powers? That is the

question he must confront as the story continues.

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Fig. 1. From “Superman/Batman Annual” #2

Retreating to his parents’ farm, Clark Kent resigns himself

to being a farmhand until Bruce Wayne challenges him to act

like a hero despite his lack of super powers. Wayne has

discovered that Socrates has been busy making individuals

confront their “very nature” (e.g. a rich thrill-seeker à la

Richard Branson is mutilated by crocodiles but is grateful

to Socrates, claiming, “I know who I am. A survivor. I faced

my trials, and I survived”). To meet with this new Socrates

costs the wealthy citizens of Gotham one million dollars,

but in Classical Athens one could undergo this trial gratis.

Clark Kent undergoes training with Batman and Robin,

engaging in his own physical and mental askesis, while Bruce

Wayne sets up an appointment with Socrates’ go-between,

cleverly named Plato.

The confrontation between Bruce Wayne and

Plato/Socrates (it turns out that they are the same person,

suggesting a parallel with the superheroes and their alter

egos) causes him to suffer a stroke. Wayne endures a series

of hallucinations and must face his own darkest fears,

namely that all his work as Batman will be for nothing and

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that he is insane (a fear often suggested by the figure of

the Joker, who is criminally insane but similar to Batman in

many ways). It is at this moment that Clark Kent returns,

dressed as Superman but without his supernatural abilities,

he defeats Socrates and then is able to talk Bruce Wayne out

of his identity crisis. Clark Kent tells him, “I thought I

was finished. That I had lost my purpose…but because of

you, I know a man can be anything he wants to be. You gave

me hope…let that count for something”. Bruce Wayne/Batman’s

attempts to clean up Gotham City despite his lack of

superpowers and his personal tragedies have inspired Clark

Kent and provided the hope that motivates Superman. Bruce

Wayne regains consciousness, Superman regains his powers,

and Socrates’ spell is broken, “Whatever chain of events

‘Mr. Socrates’ sets in motion breaks, once his victims pass

through their crucible”. This story illustrates the

Socratic idea that “the unexamined life is not worth

living”, and points out how such introspection can be a

harrowing event. The ordeal shakes both Bruce Wayne and

Clark Kent and makes them question their lifestyle and

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actions, but it leaves them more confident of their heroism

at the close of the story.

Paul Hornschemeier’s The Three Paradoxes tells the story

of a young comic artist, Paul, who has returned to his home

town in order to confront the memories of his youth and take

pictures of “the big, flat fields of Ohio” for his long-

distance girlfriend. The first panels of the graphic novel

show him working on a comic at his family’s dining room

table and questioning, “Is this even going anywhere?”. The

spare dialogue and muted color palate lends a thoughtful

tone to the work, which hinges on questions of growth and

self-improvement. Paul, when speaking to his father,

claims, “I feel like I’m stumbling into things and confusing

that with progress”. The graphic novel is broken up into a

series of memories and vignettes as different places and

meetings evoke stories of Paul’s and others’ juvenile

misfortunes. One of these is brought on when he struggles

to respond to a cashier and speaks to his father about

Zeno’s paradoxes, “I guess that’s why they still bother me…

because eventually I moved my lips, but in each of those

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moments, Zeno’s telling me I’ll never move again, and that I

never really could to begin with”.

Such struggles to advance and the

question of progress lead to a rather

comic encounter between a young Zeno

and an assembly of famous Greek

philosophers, including Socrates. In

this inset story (figure 2), Zeno

describes his three paradoxes (the

motion of a runner, Achilles’ inability to overcome a slower

runner who has a head start, and the movement of an arrow in

flight) but meets resistance from a youthful Socrates,

drawing on the dramatic scenario of Plato’s Parmenides. In

Plato’s dialogue, the primary issues revolve around

metaphysics as Socrates struggles to develop his theory of

Forms and Parmenides raises unforeseen problems in Socrates’

formulation. As in the Parmenides, Zeno and Parmenides come

to Athens from Elea in order to defend their philosophical

ideas but, in Hornschemeier’s work, Zeno’s ideas of motion

and change are interpreted from an ethical standpoint as

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Fig. 2. © Paul

both the figures of Socrates and Protagoras criticize Zeno’s

paradoxes. Hornschemeier’s Socrates, a hot-head with the

snub-nose associated with Socrates in portraiture and

literature (Cf. Pl., Symp. 215b, and Xen., Symp. 5.6), finds

Zeno’s ideas impractical and indefensible (figure 3). He

argues that change is inherent in all perception and,

therefore, that Zeno contradicts himself if he believes that

change is impossible. He ends his harangue by leading away

the other philosophers with the words, “I’m gonna go hang

out in the agora, who’s in?”.

When Protagoras speaks to Zeno, he

adopts a softer tone but likewise

finds his paradoxes unpersuasive,

“Whatever freedom, whatever solace you are seeking…it is not

in these thoughts”. In the view of Hornschemeier’s

Protagoras, Zeno’s paradoxes are an attempt to maintain a

static view of the world because he fears that his mentor

and partner Parmenides will grow old and pass away.

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Fig. 3. © Paul

This episode acts as the philosophical center of the

work and, ultimately, helps Paul to come to terms with his

feelings of inertia. As the graphic novel continues, he

leaves his small Ohio hometown and makes his way back to

Chicago where he will meet his girlfriend. Hornschemeier’s

Socrates encourages the reader to embrace the changes

inherent in life and not to obsess over minutiae. This,

however, is not the only contribution that Socrates and

Socratic thought contribute to The Three Paradoxes. Throughout

the work the Socratic theory of the

Forms is alluded to by

Hornschemeier’s different artistic

techniques, and the narrator’s

fixation with taking photographs.

He claims that he does not know

what his girlfriend actually looks

like because the photos she has

sent him have been blurry, and complains about the photos he

has taken (“most of the pictures I took on the road turned

out blurry”; “night pictures suck on this thing”). The

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Fig. 4. © Paul

characters have their own images associated with the places

they pass and the people they meet that are more

representative and more accurate than any photograph or

comic representation can be. In the final panels of the

comic, we see true movement (although it is grim -- the

perspective is made by the movement of his car around a dead

deer, figure 4), and Paul rehearses what he will say to his

girlfriend. It is possible that the dead deer is meant to

evoke the conversation between Protagoras and Zeno in which

Protagoras claims, “And some day your Parmenides will die…

will you stand at his tomb holding a theory that says he

still breathes?”. If so, the link encourages the reader to

view Paul/Zeno transcending his previous ideas. It is in

his final words that one can see Hornschemeier’s optimism as

Paul states, “You’re a little less blurry in person”.

In both The Three Paradoxes and “The Unexamined Life” the

figure of Socrates helps the protagonists progress in their

self-understanding and conception of themselves. Each work

utilizes Socratic philosophy to provide depth to the

characters and each shows how Socratic thought may be

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received and re-interpreted by modern authors. While both

works make Socrates the adversary to the primary characters

(or their surrogate in the figure of Zeno), his actions goad

them to a more nuanced view of their motivation and

accomplishments.

Bibliography

Gravett, Paul (2005) Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know. New

York: Collins

Design.

Heer, J. and K. Worcester (2004)(eds.) Arguing Comics: Literary

Masters on a Popular

Medium. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.

Hornschemeier, P. (2007) The Three Paradoxes. Seattle:

Fantagraphics Books Inc.

Kelly, J. and S. Kolins (2008) The Unexamined Life.

(Superman/Batman Annual #2).

New York: DC Comics.

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Wilson, E. (2007) The Death of Socrates. Cambridge: Harvard

University Press.

Wolk, D. (2008) Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They

Mean.

New York: Da Capo Press.

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