I’ll admit it. I take secret pleasure in reading about those days when superheroes were tots. It might just be because I love the kitschy sound of the word “tot.” Or it might be the fact that every DC superhero child spoke with terrible grammar.
Need an example? How about this amazing bit of dialogue from Superbaby in Superboy #97: “Nobody want play with me! Me not having no fun! Sure wish me had a sailboat to play with! ... What can me do?” Did no one read that and think, “Hmm…perhaps this is a bit much...” Apparently not.
Knowing that the little super tot had flight, super-strength, invulnerability, vision powers, and so on, where the heck is his vaunted “superbrain”? Why was he incapable of learning the word “I” when he was a child? Me don’t recall having that difficulty when me was young. Do you know any children who speak that way? Why did the powers that be at the super books decide that this particular speech aberration was the perfect way to show that “this is a youngster”? It wasn’t like we needed all that many clues. These are comic books. They come with illustrations. Draw a tot and I’m going to think, “Hey, look — it’s a tot.”
Not that Superbaby was the only wee one to have difficulty with grammar. Wonder Tot also had her linguistic aberrations. She knew the word “I” (has to be the wisdom of Athena at work, thank the goddess.) However, she apparently never met the various forms of the verb “to be.” Wonder Woman #130 features an adventure with Wonder Tot and her friend, Mister Genie. The Tot released this gigantic, magical, former resident of Baghdad from a chest and they became good friends. Some of Wonder Tot’s dialogue is suspiciously unaffected by her Totosity. However, she is by no means free of the anti-grammar disease that affects most DC children. “I up!” she says upon waking. “I busy practicing…” or “It against law” shows that not only does she have difficult with the “to be” words, but she has a hit-or-miss attitude toward articles like “the.”
I was little more than a tot myself when I began reading these tales of super toddlers. It made no sense to me then, either. Was I over-thinking things even when I was but a lass? Perhaps I took my comic books too seriously. I believed that Superbaby must’ve been quite a handful for the Kents, or that Wonder Tot would hang out with a genie. Then again, I also thought putting a red cape on Krypto was a logical move, but that’s another story. The point is that I trusted my comic books to present entertaining stories that didn’t stray too far from the required suspension of disbelief. And yet, those grammatical errors got under my skin when I barely knew what a pronoun was.
Oh, man, I just realized I was a word nerd even then. I was doomed to a life of internally correcting errors on message boards, wasn’t I?
And now, for my final confession: I adore those crazy baby stories. I do. There’s something very fun about seeing the heroes we all know and love in such a vulnerable and innocent time in their lives. The stories are usually filled with mayhem and outrageous adventures but in the end, everything works out and we get to see how sweetly adoring Ma and Pa Kent or Hippolyte were with their beloved children. Granted, teaching those kids a good preschool lesson in grammar wouldn’t have hurt, but I guess they were too worried about the Tots innocently destroying the planet to get all that worked up about pronouns and verbs.
Joanna Sandsmark—A former writer for DC Comics and TV’s Weird Science, Joanna Sandsmark is also the author of The Wisdom of Yo Meow Ma, A Girl’s Best Friend, 10 Spiritual Lessons You Can Learn From Your Cat, 10 Spiritual Lessons You Can Learn From Your Dog, and Explore Your Destiny With Runes. If you'd like to learn more, including a detailed bio and more information about Joanna's books, please visit her Web site or visit her blog.
This is a guest article. The thoughts and opinions in this piece are those of their author and are not necessarily the thoughts of the Certified Collectibles Group.
