C2E2 Day 1 Part 2 Mental Health and Superheros

So I feel like my last panel for Friday "The Value of Mental Illness, Finding Resilience in Pain" deserved its own blog post. I attended this panel because I went to a similar one last year which I really enjoyed. While I was a bit sad Robbie Thompson did not crash the panel like last year I am glad I went again.

Generally, there was a discussion about how comics are real life in high relief which is useful when working with patients in therapy. And this idea that we all want to connect to something.

When the panel was asked who they would like to work with, in therapy, one responded with Superman. And there was a great discussion about how Superman despite common appearances is a very complex character. The question becomes how do you connect in "a world of paper mache and spun glass". There was a focus on his loneliness, and how he is "worshiped but not accepted" and how he always feels like an alien (because he is). In addition, the emotional strength that is needed to be super was explored. The one comic creator (the rest were therapists) wrote a comic at one point where instead of Superman being adopted by the Kents he ends up in and out of foster care and ends up turning into a major villain instead. It was also determined that Superman uses Clark Kent in order to connect, and that connection needs to be authentic, and that if Superman was able to somehow not feel like an outsider he would remain Superman and would stop being Clark.

There then was an interesting conversation about Batman and how there is nothing that would make him give up the role. He would need to have permission not to be responsible for everything. And that he took on this coping mechanism as a response to his parent's death. (It was suggested that the reason he took it so much harder and got so much darker, then say spiderman was in part because of age and part because Bruce Wayne led a very sheltered life before where bad things did not happen. Spiderman instead grew up in a community where bad things did happen so it affected him differently. He saw bad things occurred before losing family.) There was a great comment about how superheroes can't take time off, unlike say a firefighter or police officer who gets time off and generally does not spend all that time of feeling like they should be
out on the streets instead.

The role of fantasy was also explored. Fantasy both gives us a break from the world and gives us a safe space to work things out. In terms of writing about mental health in a sensitive way (Which can be hard because comics work in shorthand focused on external not internal conflict):

• Important to name things
• To make meaningful must work through
• Has to affect others (family/friends)
• There is a fear "What am I without my trauma" so when people get better they get scared and go back to the old ways

Finally, the comic creator spoke to the fact that people say the answer is simply to open the doors and more diverse creators will show up but they tend not to because they have no seen themselves in those roles. This is changing but it will still take time to have the numbers of diverse creators as we want.