Get Your Pretense On!

22 • Get Your Pretense On!

The StrangeWorld of Transformation in Comic Stories Peter Parker, the shy photographer swallowed up by his angry editor, living with his aunt in a small house, is in fact the Amazing Spider Man. Clark Kent, who grew up in little Smallville, and who works as an easy-to-forget reporter, is nothing less than Kal-El of Krypton, known more familiarly to us as Superman. And Bruce Wayne, the so-called playboy and wealthy spoiled brat who wastes away his time and energy on pleasure and selfishness, is in fact the caped Crusader, the Batman. You see, in hero and fairy stories, you can’t judge a thing on the basis of how it looks; you’ve got to go deeper down, further in, to the real meaning of the thing. In a comic book adventure, you simply can never comprehend the full nature of a thing by judging it purely on the face of it. In fairy stories, a frog may be a prince, a beautiful temptress a wicked witch, a po’ girl in the basement may be the future princess of the kingdom, or a small-town boy may be Superman. In fairy stories, it is prudent to kiss every frog you encounter, because you never know if a prince might happen to be dwelling inside it. Beasts talk and flowers come alive and lobsters quadrille in the world of the fairy tale, and nothing is apt to be what it seems. And if this is true of the creatures that the hero meets on his quest, it is true also of the hero himself who at any moment may be changed into a beast or a stone or a king or have his heart turned to ice. Maybe above all they are tales about transformation where all creatures are revealed in the end as what they truly are – the ugly duckling becomes a great white swan, the frog is revealed to be a prince, and the beautiful but wicked queen Frederick Buechner in Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale says this of fairy tales: