Universes beyond my knowing

I have wondered a lot about the appeal of superheroes. At the risk of sounding wildly repetitive, as a middle-age woman of a literary bent, I'm not drawn to the images---- so I haven't read much of the genre. Too bad for me! There is a lot in the superhero world that I would like if I'd given it half a chance.

Every adolescent male and quite a few females, seem to enjoy the time they spend in this alternate world. So do millions of others, evidently. Superheroes are big business. Superman, Spiderman, Batman and more are all guaranteed winners at the box-office. Superheroes seem to have become part of mainstream culture.

In this age, when image is all, it might even be suggested that performing artists, professional wrestlers and athletes are the superheroes of our day reflecting our martial culture and obsession with the body. Movies like Ironman muse on the true costs of the US military machine, while Frank Miller and Lynn Varley's 300 draws parallels between the Spartans and the US mission in Iraq---both saving democracy, evidently. But financial success is not the only measurement of the genre.

I am newly interested in the world of the superheroes because of the personal relevancy young people seem to find in the personalities and exploits of the superhero characters. Gene Kannenberg Jr. writes, in 5oo Essential Graphic Novels :

It was Stan Lee's revolutionary approach of imagining the superheroes as real people with down-to-earth problems that really fired the public's imagination. These were heroes as ordinary human beings that teenagers could identify with.

This is a genre that keeps evolving, keeps re-inventing itself. Contemporary issues are explored but escapism is still available. The young people I know that read these, enjoy the humour, the adventure and the ideas. They are quite passionate about the details of the different universes. There is a lot of self-referential hijinks, which everyone seems to enjoy. 'Knowing the inside jokes' adds to the fun. These days it seems to be kind of cool to be a comic/superhero geek. (Even I remember the multiple Seinfeld references to Superman).


According to my classmate, Adam, there are superhero titles for all tastes. He described one comic, that focuses on the characters (city workers) who clean up the mess left from superhero battles.Now that sounds like a comic a mom could like!