James McMurray is up for promotion at the factory where he, his father, and his grandfather all work. He's not sure that he wants to settle into this life, and goes to see his friends. They look pissed. Flashback to thirty-six hours earlier. James and his girlfriend Amy are having a fight about his lack of initiative. Amy wants a better life than their parents, James objects to the implication that there is anything wrong with his parents, and they argue. Turns out that James just doesn't really want to break into the factory and steal the payroll, and resents the fact that his childhood friends only want his help because he is super-strong. He deliberately screws up the theft, which results in his friends getting fired. Back to the pissed-off friends, thirty-six hours later: James breaks up with Amy, ditches the gang, and joins his father and grandfather for a beer.
Once again, Wood & Cloonan explore family dynamics (and, once again, priorize the conservative nuclear family unit). Which family does James want, the one he was born into or the one he chose? It is clear that James's crew, where they call him Jimmy, is not the family he will choose. When they first appear, they are all angry - sneering and growling at James. We find out later that he deliberately screwed up their heist and cost them their jobs. Amy, for all the important truths that she speaks, is never without a sour and hostile expression on her face. It seems reasonable of her to want more than "12-hour shifts waitressing" or sitting "home alone on nights and weekends while you pull extra shifts and then come home stinking and too exhausted to do anything but watch TV." What's wrong with wanting a life of more than mere subsistence, a life better than the one your parents' had? But it is hard to like her with that perpetual grimace on her face. This, somewhat problematically, only serves to reinforce James's choice to ditch her.
The fact that Amy and the crew only want to exploit James's strength isn't a critique of ambition or an anti-elitist reaction to self-improvement, however. Amy and the crew do not respect the basic decency of a person who works long hours to provide for his or her family. Amy doesn't want to work hard to improve herself - she just wants more money. In many ways, "Stand Strong" is a very conservative paean to the working man.
Super-strength is, maybe, the most common super-power. However, it usually comes as a subset of other powers, something thrown in to make the fights more interesting. Spider-Man is super-strong but can also stick to walls, sense danger, and date women way out of his league. No one would identify Spider-Man, primarily, by his strenth. Even Superman's strength is secondary to his flight, speed, vision powers, and invulnerability. Almost every team, heroes and villains, have a strongman. Even Emma Frost has super-strength now when she turns into a diamond. The more typical "strong guys," like the Thing or the Hulk, are also invulnerable. You could list dozens of characters who have super-strength accompanied with another power. Rarely do super-heroes only have strength. Generally, strong guys are not the leaders or the brains of a team. They can be the conscience of the team, like Colossus with the X-Men or Thing with the Fantastic Four, and their strength is often reflective of a strength of character. The Cartesian mind/body split being thematically central, they represent the heart of the team, not its brain. They are the blue-collar workers of super-hero comics.
Picking up where "Bad Blood" left off, "Stand Strong" isn't as interested in the super-power as either "NYC" or "Emmy." In the earlier stories, the focus was on how the protagonist's power damaged her life. Beginning with "Bad Blood," but becoming more pronounced in "Stand Strong," the power is a background feature meant to help illustrate theme. For James, his strength isn't a metaphor for conviction or clarity of vision. The achronological narrative of "Stand Strong" only emphasizes the fact that James can't fully embrace either option presented to him. He doesn't want to work in the factory all his life, but refuses to see that choice as something upon which to be looked down. James thinks that his strength, at least in the eyes of his friends, makes him a tool. "Big Jimmy the Utensil," he calls himself ironically. But, as his sabotage of the robbery proves, he's not just a hammer to be swung. Though it's never stated, there is no indication that James inherited his strength from his father, the way Samantha and Sean Hurley inherited their father's invulnerability. In "Stand Strong," James's strength demonstrates the life he is made for.
Wood & Cloonan, here more so than in any previous story, play up the ambiguities. In this case, it's James's choice to embrace his father's lifestyle - the life, he believes, that he is built for but the life he doesn't want. Wood & Cloonan show how James is trapped between the two worlds. The same clean, white rooms appear in the Vice-President's office where James is offered the promotion and the apartment he shares with Amy. James also seems to be resentful of his father's constant attempts to keep him at the factory. "This was just meant to be a short term thing, you know," he tells his dad. "I always figured I would do more, somehow. Travel maybe." As his father explains, though, "we're not made for things like travel and college or whatever else you had in mind. C'mon, we're working class people." The iconic cover image of James holding a hammer, and the repeated use of that image in the story itself, creates a sense of James as an exemplar of the proletariat. He is the working class man, write large. His strength is as much the product of his toil as it is a sign of his ability to endure toil.
But, the story ends with James joining his father and grandfather for a beer. The bartender notes that he's "the spitting image of the both of ya." James, head shaved and covered in tattoos, looks very little like his father and grandfather. To Cloonan's immense credit, though, a reader can tell what the bartender means. The men have similar jaw lines and, in faces so simply rendered, James's features echo those of his dad. In a two panel sequence, James looks over to his progenitors. Sitting side-by-side, they look like a time lapse photo. The second panel is of James, his tattoos hidden and his shaved head out of frame, looking surprised. He sees the resemblance now, too. On the next page, he surveys the bar and the page ends with a close-up of James's face, his expression painfully unreadable as the weight of his choice sinks in. The final splash page is of the town and factory, a black silhouette in a white sky. The page is mostly black, the dark world underneath the factory, the future swallowed up by the forces that shape James's life. The men in the bar all look so similar not only because they are related, but also because the factory makes people this way. James, like his father and grandfather, will be shaped and remade by that industrial force.
Next week: "Girl You Want"
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