Crisis on Multiple Earths

An interruption of the two-part entry on actors to discuss the hot topic of the moment, today’s Guiding Light/Marvel Comics crossover.

Having read comics for a number of years growing up, I’ve often commented to people that they were similar to the soap genre. A creator responsible for either must steward characters who have existed for a long time and who fulfill certain roles within the storytelling universe they occupy. The only variant in soaps is the presence of actors, who can come and go (though their characters sometimes don’t), whereas comic book characters take part in story at the will of those writing and drawing it. Characters essentially contribute to the “brand name”: While I suppose it’s possible that All My Children would go on without Erica Kane, or that The Avengers would not regularly feature Captain America, both courses would probably be inadvisable.

The storytelling tricks of the trade also translate across soaps and comics – the cliffhanger, the “front-burner” storyline, the simmering subplots that pay off a few months later. These have been a staple of soaps since their inception, but it took Stan Lee, with the invention of the Fantastic Four’s dysfunctional family and then angst-ridden teen Spider-Man in 1961, to bring continuous, month-to-month dramatic storytelling to the comic book form. His innovations were perfected by Chris Claremont’s 15-year or so run on the X-Men, a period which remains the most soap operatic of all comic book storylines, complete with love triangles, illicit affairs, tortured couples with secrets, and even a mysterious doppelganger of a long-dead lover.

The most general similarity between soaps and comics, of course, is that each requires a suspension of disbelief toward the heightened storytelling—a willingness to accept the opera in the soap opera and the comic in the comic book. We have to believe that Barbara Ryan would be allowed to make a lengthy witness stand speech in her own defense just as we have to accept that Bruce Banner’s purple pants stay on even when he transforms into the Hulk.

Guiding Light’s decision to do an episode where Harley Cooper gets super-powers – and to allow their own characters to be featured in a Marvel comic book – is surprising only in that no one did it before, given these similarities. Why then does it seem so discomfiting? Is it Beth Ehlers dressed in thigh-high boots and a mask? Is it Buzz Cooper rendered two-dimensionally talking with Wolverine and looking twenty years younger?

The answer is that, despite the generic comparisons, superheroes really shouldn’t have any place in the world of Guiding Light. No matter the glorious fun of movies like Superman and Spider-Man, or the intriguing mysteries of the new series Heroes, those kinds of characters belong in a different type of story. (Or, at least, on Passions.) As ratings have waned disastrously, soaps in general have drifted toward a sameness, poaching what once made each show unique in the hopes that they will all find what will make them popular again. Guiding Light should be a show that reflects the experience of the American family – over the top, of course, to the extent that all soaps are over the top – but real. Putting Harley in tights seems to cheapen the statement her father made about her four years ago, on July 4, 2002, when he called her and her brother Frank – both police officers – genuine American heroes for being the kind of people who put their lives on the line to help others.

The Coopers have no business mucking in the comic book universe because they should represent, more than anyone else on the show, the real world. They do dishes, they save up all year to buy their kids Christmas presents, they argue and worry when one of them doesn’t come home. They don’t stop runaway cars or absorb electricity. Putting them in a plot like this creates a tiny hole in the show’s fabric of continuity. These “Inside the Light” mini-movies might be entertaining today, but then what world will our characters occupy tomorrow?

We all know this crossover is going to be a one-time experiment, unless the increased publicity results in a bump in ratings, which is unlikely. It’s just frustrating that this latest distraction is diverting the course of self-improvement GL must undertake in order to survive.

There’s nothing wrong with comic books, and the ones with the soapy stories are pretty fun.

There’s plenty wrong with soap operas, and comic books are not the place to turn for help. These are two worlds that shouldn't be merged together.