Superhero in a Chinese classic

Velvet and I are watching a Great Courses lecture series on the Foundations of Eastern Civilization, and the professor, Craig G. Benjamin, mentioned right off that, among other things, he'd be covering classics of Chinese literature, including the 16th Century Journey to the West, which I've had around for a while because it influenced sf writer Cordwainer Smith -- only I'd never gotten around to reading it because it's really LONG -- the translation is in four volumes of 500-plus pages each. I'd been vaguely aware that they featured a character called Monkey; indeed, that was the title of an abridged translation many years ago. But I'm most of the way through the first volume now, and it turns out that he is practically like Superman in strength and invulnerability, and has a lot of magical powers to boot. His origin story (born from a stone) isn't any more implausible than those of some comic book superheroes today.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Wukong

--Brantley

..... More or less.

If you want theres probabbly a dozen Chinese and Hong Kong movies which have done journey to the west as the subject(with various effects quality), as well as that many anime and other animated version. Its one of those stories that always threatened to be made as a hollywood movie but never gets made. its a good book in any case.

As a superhero story its falls into the category that most ancient religious stories-greek gods, norse myth, Budist Dieties like monkie-well are kind of the one of the direct inpsirations for superheros. You want to know who the first real superheroine is? probabbly Artemis.

The Sun Wukong as superhero analogy has been explored pretty well. Notably, his Japanese name is Son Goku, which is not coincidentally the name of the hero of Dragonball and Dragonball Z. In Dragonball Z, Son Goku is a survivor from a destroyed planet who arrives on Earth as an infant, is found and raised by a local, and grows up to become Earth's greatest hero. Which is not a familiar story at all.

Pure coincidence, but the sundry ogres, demons and dragons Monkey and the others encounter on the way to India are rather like the monsters of the week 400 years later on The X-Files.

--Brantley