The People’s Publisher

Some of the earliest representations of myth and legend included creatures which were half man half beast. Centaurs, sea-horses, and mermen/mermaids are found in ancient Greek and Roman frescoes and writings. Incidentally, the term for such creatures in art :grotesque, comes from the Latin grotte or grotto, as many of the best examples of these were to be found in remnants of ancient mural decorations in rediscovered underground vaults in Rome.
Historians argue over whether these creatures were actually beleived in as real, or were useful as metaphors for the spirits which animated the natural world, the plants, skies and waters of ancient man. Sprites, wood nymphs, mermaids and gorgons are archetypal dream-creatures which are part man, part god and bridge the gap between man and nature. Free from the constraints of being human and the laws of men, these fantastic creatures, cavorted, danced and indulged their every urge, enjoying a freedom which society did not allow to men. They often were used as characters in myths and parables to show the dangerous consequences of indulging our more savage or “natural” tendencies.
It is not simply due to the much reviled Comics Code of the 1950’s that comics so often act as this century’s “morality play”. Half-men, which include many of our popular super heroes (batman, spiderman, aquaman) half man, half-whatever simply serve this function best. Ernst Kris, a contemporary or Freud wrote in 1952, that “the pleasure we take in comics largely is a triumph over anxiety, the acheivement of dominance over psychological forces which threaten our precious control.” He insisted that the artist must have “a strong ego, mastering and ordering the instinctual urges through giving them the outlet of an acceptable shape.”
In comics it is normally the super-villains (even more often half-man, half-animal) who play the role of the unfettered ego, destroying the universe or taking over the world, and who can only be stopped by one who is similarly split between human and supernatural forces, our super hero. In the latter half of the 20th century, global warming, nuclear science, and other noxious aspects of human society have been shown to be far more destructive to our lives than natural forces in the ancient world, and so the role of the mythic hero is often to remind us of our connection to nature, and the precarious balance we must maintain on the planet in order to survive.