Drawing Disability: Superman, Huntington’s, and the Comic Form in It’s a Bird …

Abstract

Superman is perfection. From his speed to his strength to his unwavering morality, the Man of Steel epitomizes pure ability, an unadulterated and unparalleled physical and ethical prowess. Neither his heroic progeny nor his creators, however, could fully emulate the ideals he embodies; superheroes have grown darker and more ambiguous, their heroism less straightforward and unproblematic, while the embodied lives involved in Superman’s legacy have always been and will always be imperfect, mutable, and even disabled. Jerry Siegel, one of Superman’s originators, was undersized and bespectacled, and the other, Joe Shuster, became blind, suffered muscle spasms, and wore cosmetic lifts. George Reeves, the Superman of the 1950s television adaptation, was afflicted with alcoholism and apparently died by suicide during his tenure as the hero.¹ Most famously, Christopher Reeve, the Superman of the 1970s and 1980s films, severed his spine after being flung off a horse. While such a tragic history may seem like a curse, these circumstances appear sinister only when contrasted with Superman’s utter perfection. His invulnerability constructs all vulnerability as deviant. When read through his superheroic paradigm, embodiedness (or, the universal experience of living in and through a permeable and mortal body) mutates into a curse. Superman’s legacy, therefore, is not only perfection, but also impossibility, the gap between the super and the human, ability and disability.