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In the winter of 1940, All-Star Comics number three
was released to the world.
It featured something we might take for granted nowadays,
a large group of many Golden Age heroes
who had previously only been solo characters,
heroes like The Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman,
Sandman, and more in one team, the Justice Society.
The team was a hit, but with the comics industry
suffering in post World War Two America,
their stories came to an end in the early 1950s.
Then, with the birth of the Silver Age of comics,
writer Gardner Fox was tasked
with reintroducing the Justice Society
featuring DC's new lineup
of re-imagined characters.
Influenced by Major League Baseball,
Fox changed the Justice Society
to the Justice League,
and in March of 1960,
The Brave and the Bold number 28 hit shelves,
featuring a roster of Superman,
Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash,
Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman.
It was a massive success.
The Justice League is comprised of
the World's Greatest Heroes,
aka DC's premier characters.
Together they fight threats to the world,
the universe, and even the multiverse.
Through all of their adventures,
the JL might seem fantastic and unattainable,
you know, since they are all fictional characters,
but if you'll allow me to get meta here for a second,
they operate much like the comics fans
who read their stories.
(upbeat rock music)
I know it might seem strange or even big headed of me
to claim that comics fans are no different
than super powerful beings who have saved
the world many times over.
I’m not trying to say that I am literally Batman.
I’m just saying that you’ve never seen us
in the same room together.
I’m kidding.
If anyone, I would be Aquaman,
and I would own it.
No, what I’m really trying to argue
is that being a comics fan
functions in our world in a similar way
that being a member of the Justice League does.
At their most basic, comics fans and the JL are groups.
Obviously.
But why do we join groups at all?
There are two basic motivations for this.
The first one is self-esteem.
In-groups create a positive distinction of themselves
compared to out-groups.
It’s the attitude of "We are better than them,”
a mentality that has caused so many problems
throughout history, but you get the idea.
Belonging to a group that is seen by you or by society
as a whole as positive boosts your own self-esteem.
The Justice League is known not just throughout their world,
but throughout their entire universe.
Joining the team presumably does wonders
for one’s sense of pride and confidence.
And in a world where comic books are dominating pop culture,
along with many other things
classically viewed as quote unquote nerdy,
we can be proud identifying ourselves as nerds.
I know I am.
I named my channel after it.
The second motivation for joining groups
is the reduction of uncertainty.
There’s a lot to this one,
but the general idea is that if someone isn’t exactly sure
where they fit in with the social world,
if they don’t really know their place in society,
they strive to identify with groups
which have clearly defined roles.
It tells them who they are,
who other people in the group are,
and how everyone should, or at the very least, might behave.
In other words, it grants a kind of order.
When the Justice League expanded,
they put Martian Manhunter in charge of
which heroes go on which missions.
- [Martian Manhunter] I know a lot of you are used
to making those decisions for yourself,
but from now on,
we have to be more coordinated than that.
- It might not seem like being a comics fan
provides any sort of order, but I think that it does.
For example, Wednesday is always new comic book day.
That’s something that is always in my weekly routine.
When a new comic book movie trailer comes out,
I have to give my opinions on it.
I have to watch it in theaters when it comes out,
and then talk about it.
When a big event happens in the comics,
I sometimes make videos or podcasts about it.
A lot of what I do is, in a sense,
controlled by the world of comics.
As silly as it might sound, being a comics fan
has added a lot of structure to my life.
But simply joining a group
doesn’t make you a devout member.
Core heroes of the Justice League are loyal to its cause,
and we all know that there are plenty
of die hard comics fans out there.
But what makes someone so devoted to a particular group?
In a word, initiation.
You know how fraternities and sororities
famously have hazing rituals?
Or how military training can be pretty brutal?
These take advantage
of an interesting mechanic of our brains.
Psychologists have discovered that the harder it is
to join a group, the more loyalty each member has to it.
If all someone has to do is, you know,
show up in order to join a particular group,
they likely won't have much affinity for it.
They didn’t have to work to earn their spot,
so there’s nothing invested in it.
On the flip side, if you go through grueling trials
or perform embarrassing acts in hopes of
being allowed a place in the group,
you’ve raised the stakes.
And if you’re accepted into the group,
you’ll have a greater allegiance to it
because your brain tricks you.
It tries to rationalize why you endured through
the long and humiliating agony
just to gain access to a silly little group of people.
It must be because that group is valuable and important,
and being a part of it is beneficial.
It’s like a chicken or the egg thing, right?
Do you endure hardships because you’re loyal to a group,
or are you loyal to the group
because you’ve endured hardships?
Maybe a little bit of both.
With the Justice League, we’ve seen how they came together.
It was the first story told in the New 52.
Heroes who vaguely knew of each other’s existence
coming together as a team,
fighting an impossible threat,
suffering through immeasurable pain,
putting their lives on the line as one unit.
They didn’t start out as friends.
In fact, Superman fought Batman and Green Lantern
when they first met.
But through the trials of the mission
that threw them together,
they forged a bond with each other.
By story’s end, they were a team.
To further this idea,
the first episode of Justice League Unlimited
was literally called Initiation.
Green Arrow was simply invited to join the team,
but he kept turning it down.
He wasn’t invested at all.
But after tagging along on a mission
and barely stopping a monstrous threat,
he decided to stick around.
That, and he also caught a glimpse of Black Canary,
which, you know, is understandable.
In the case of comics fans, many of us have
experienced being made fun of,
or are stigmatized and stereotyped
for reading silly tales of superheroes.
This may counter-intuitively lead to an even stronger
affiliation with being a proud comic book nerd.
However, as much as we want to be a part of a group,
we also want to be recognized as a unique individual.
The way that those two contradictory ideas balance out
is with what social psychologist Marilynn Brewer calls
Optimal Distinctiveness Theory.
Being part of a group satisfies our need for inclusion,
yet being recognized as an individual
satisfies our need to be seen as unique.
And the struggle is balancing these two desires.
In the case of the Justice League,
this is accomplished in a few ways.
Most apparent, when looking at the JL lineup,
is how even though they are a team,
each member has their own unique costume,
as opposed to other teams like the X-Men
or the Fantastic Four where a group’s costumes
generally have a unified design scheme.
Psychologist Wind Goodfriend,
whose name sounds like a Silver Age comic book character,
notes that the fact that each hero in the Justice League
wears a uniform of some kind
shows that they're part of an elite crowd, i.e superheroes.
But there aren’t any regulations for the uniforms,
meaning each member can establish their independence
through individualized costumes.
You can have Shazam, and Aquaman, and Cyborg
on the same team even though their styles clash quite a bit.
It actually might be beneficial that way.
Having a uniform look across the team runs the risk
of causing members to lose their sense of self-awareness.
And of course it’s not just their outward appearances.
Every member has a different set of skills and powers
that enable them to be uniquely suited for specific tasks.
Superman explains that each of the members are special
and distinct in what they bring to the table,
and yet they're all equal in at least one way,
each of them are willing to make the sacrifices
a hero has to make.
And this idea that each hero
has different abilities is important.
It’s not just a way for writers
to tell interesting stories.
Having too many people in a group
creates all kinds of problems,
like a diffusion of responsibility where one member assumes
that some action is the responsibility of other members
who can or already have taken care of it.
What's that, some monster's attacking the city?
Eh, there are plenty of members in the Justice League.
I’m sure a one of them can handle it without me.
This can occur in groups as small as three people,
but the larger the group, the greater the opportunity
for this diffusion of responsibility to take place.
E.g. The Bystander Effect.
A smaller group means that each person
has a stronger sense of responsibility for every task,
And that's only heightened by the fact that each member
of the Justice League possesses a unique set of skills.
If you need to stop a villain using speed,
that’s a job for Flash or possibly Superman.
If you need to hack into a computer system,
who better than Cyborg?
If the mission is an underwater one,
ya got Aquaman.
Each member of the team has something that the others don’t.
In real life we might not have superpowers,
but we do have different knowledge bases.
An interesting hypothesis by Daniel Wegner
proposes the idea that we store and retrieve information
in other people’s minds.
This use of external memory systems
is called transactive memory,
and it sounds weird,
but you’ve probably experienced it.
Google is a perfect example of a transactive memory system,
so much so that it’s actually changing the kinds of memories
that we store in our brains.
We tend to remember where we can find
a piece of information rather than the information itself.
It's called, cleverly enough, The Google Effect.
If you want to look up what the capital of Norway is
or what issue Supergirl debuted in,
you can just Google it.
Don’t bother memorizing it,
because that information will always be in your pocket.
All you have to remember is how to Google something.
FYI, the capital of Norway is Oslo,
and Kara Zor-El first appeared in Action Comics number 252.
You're welcome.
That was gonna bug me the whole time.
But transactive memory extends beyond computers.
You can use other people as databases of information.
If you have a friend who knows a lot about cars,
you probably won’t retain any information about cars
'cause you can always just ask her.
Or if you’re a DC fan, your Marvel friends might be
asking you about trivia related to Green Lantern.
It’s basically treating people like a human search engine.
In a group of comics fans, no two members
will have the exact same knowledge stored in their brains.
One person might know a lot
about obscure Jimmy Olsen stories,
while another has an insane knowledge
of 90's comic book artists.
Everyone brings something unique to the table,
which allows everyone to reach their optimal level
of distinctiveness by feeling included in a group,
yet still feeling like an individual.
And remember, size of a group matters.
So what about Comic-Con?
Could large comic book conventions where fans get together
in hordes actually be a bad thing?
Your perceived sense of uniqueness
might start to diminish when you're in a crowd
of 100,000 like-minded nerds.
Even Justice League Unlimited, despite its name,
was very limited to only a few dozen members at most,
far from the attendance that many
major cons receive today.
And that’s not to say that comic cons are a negative thing.
Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman
all have their own adventures outside of the League,
but still come together as a team.
And I would argue that it’s as the Justice League
when the heroes of DC Comics reach their full potential,
and really shine.
Maybe the same thing can be said for us comics fans
whenever we get together and share our love of the art form.
What do you guys think?
Does the Justice League demonstrate
what it’s like to be a comics fan?
And what are your thoughts about comic cons?
Are they beneficial
or do you just kinda feel lost in a crowd?
Let’s talk about it all in the comments.
And once again, this video was sponsored by Loot Crate.
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If you want more videos about comic book teams,
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My name is Scott, reminding you to read between the panels
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See ya.