Super smackdowns

Not even Batman and Superman are able to hug it out these cranky days. Why can't we get along with our friends?

"I think you'll fight, fight, fight," the evil genius Lex Luthor predicts in this year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Captain America goes rock-'em-sock-'em against Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War, another big-screen bout between buddies. Also in current release, X-Men: Apocalypse sets up a wrangle of misunderstood mutants against other misunderstood mutants.

This year's fifth annual River City Comic Expo comes just in time to sort out the confusion. The comics gathering will be Saturday and June 12 at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

"This year we have all four halls at the Statehouse, which gives us 80,000-plus square feet to play with, plus all of the conference and meeting rooms," expo organizer Brent Douglass says.

Among guests of the comics gathering, psychologist Travis Langley is editor of two new books about troubled relationships as demonstrated by quarrelsome fictional characters -- Captain America vs. Iron Man: Freedom, Security, Psychology and Game of Thrones Psychology.

"Everyone makes mistakes," says Langley, professor of psychology at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia. "Everyone is human. Everyone has moments they'd rather not have follow them for the rest of their lives."

Fictional heroes sometimes reflect real-life conflicts in which nobody wins. People of good intent do the best they can to get along, but they come to blows anyway and wind up sorry things went too far.

Captain America butts hard heads with Iron Man over the question of "freedom vs. security," Langley says, and they wouldn't be the first to find they can't lick it. They are up against "the basic human dilemma," as the 20th-century psychologist Erich Fromm called it.

"We understand the positions they're taking," Langley says. "We hurt for them, we cringe at the friction between them, and we wish they would find a middle ground earlier in their story. Unfortunately, life moves too quickly sometimes, and pushes people into hasty decisions.

"What's so strong to us, though, is that they're still trying to do the right thing. Captain America, in particular, does not want to let anybody down."

ANGST FOR THE MEMORIES

Superheroes have been slugging it out with their best friends for almost as long as regular people have behaved the same way. "Lay on, Macduff," as Shakespeare wrote: "And damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!'"

Comic-book scrappers generally fight to a tie, or the brawl is interrupted, or they come away realizing the trouble was all for nothing -- that it could have been avoided just by listening to TV psychologist Dr. Phil (McGraw).

"Relationships are negotiated," according to Dr. Phil, "and if you deal with ultimatums and authority all the time, then you're not going to get anywhere."

But try telling Wolverine or the Incredible Hulk or the honorable party across the aisle or maybe the people in the apartment next door.

In comics, one the strangest and most avoidable matchups happened between Superman and real-life heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali.

Drawn by River City Comic Expo guest Neal Adams, the 1978 smackdown found boxing's "The Greatest" and Krypton's Man of Steel at odds over which contender deserved to strut the title of Earth's greatest champion.

They put up their dukes on a planet where Superman has merely human strength, and Ali packs the meaner punch. But they learn what they should have known all along: that they have to work together to save the world.

"Superman," Ali concedes as they shake hands at the end, "we are the greatest."

The Batman v Superman movie took an Ali-like pummeling from the critics (a 27 percent splat on the movie website Rotten Tomatoes). Bad reviews griped that the adversaries didn't have much to fight over, and not much happened when they finally got to it.

But in the comics, these two have been glowering at each other since artist-writer Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns series in the 1980s.

"Bruce, this is idiotic," Superman objects to getting physical. Batman thinks the big guy is too much of an obedient straight arrow.

The comic-book fight was "about years of history between these heroes," Langley says, having studied the relationship for his book, Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight (2012).

One thing their continuing bullheadedness shows, he says, is that "the 21st-century age of instant communication and 24/7 news makes it hard to believe in untarnished heroes."

But "people still want heroes. Everything the world does to make it harder for us to believe in them sometimes just makes us yearn for them even more."

TAKING IT TO THE MAT BOARD

Little Rock comics artist John Lucas will be among comics creators at the comics expo along with Larry Hama (G.I. Joe), Phil Hester (Swamp Thing) and Mike Zeck (The Punisher).

Many of the convention's artist guests will draw their famous characters on the spot on commission, and Lucas expects to turn out "a lot of Deadpool, because I've done Deadpool, and Deadpool is super popular right now."

In the recent Deadpool movie, the fast-healing, secretly disfigured super-mercenary flippantly takes on a bunch of baddies. But how would he hold up against Batman? Against Superman?

"It would depend on the editor," Lucas says.

Like most always, when forces are too big to lose, "I expect it would be a draw."

AND IN THIS CORNER,

WEARING WET TRUNKS --

These are among the most epic squabbles in comics history, each a milestone of miscommunication, each with a lesson learned:

• The Human Torch vs. the Sub-Mariner series, 1940, billed as "the battle of the comic century." The Sub-Mariner is bent on the "mad destruction" of New York City. The Torch won't tolerate this fishy guy's yanking down the Washington Bridge. The battle is waged by land and sea for several issues of Marvel Mystery Comics. Finally, the curvaceous but no-nonsense police officer Betty Dean lectures the boys to be nice, and the Sub-Mariner goes home with a compliment from the Torch: "You were a tough customer."

Lesson learned: One riot, one woman.

• Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man, 1976. Superman blames Spider-Man for kidnapping Lois Lane, actually the nefarious work of Lex Luthor. They slug it out as long as Spider-Man benefits from a weird radiation that allows him to hold his own against his super-powered opponent. Once the ray wears off, they go to their calm-down corners. Superman wonders if he might have been wrong in the first place.

Lesson learned: In the words of Superman, "I think it's time we compared notes, don't you?"

• Hulk Vs. The Thing, 1964. The big green Hulk reads in the news that Captain America has replaced him as a member of the crime-fighting Avengers. This sets him on a city-smashing rampage, and only the big orange Thing stands flat-footed in his way. "You are just a muscular freak," the Hulk smack-talks his opponent. "But I'm the Hulk!" The Thing pretty much has to agree. Just in time, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four take over against the Hulk, becoming friends in the process.

Lesson learned: Newspapers make a difference.

Style on 06/05/2016