Joanna wrote:
> Never liked the super-heroes. Just sayin.
We had a discussion on this over at Marxmail. I said basically the same thing: that superheroes are reactionary crap.
Gary Groth, founder of The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, is also a venerable superhero hater, and attributes superhero fandom with holding back the acceptance of comics as an art form. In no other medium -- novels or film, for example -- is the meaning of "mainstream" and "alternative" so bizarrely inverted: the literary autobiographical comics of Harvey Pekar or Robert Crumb, the historical work of Art Spiegelman and Marjane Satrapi and political reportage of Joe Sacco, the surreal humor of Daniel Clowes, are all considered "alternative" comics, whereas b-grade science fiction juvenile power fantasies are considered the "mainstream" of the medium.
And superheroes as a genre tends to absorb any immanent critique; Alan Moore's original 1986 Watchmen was a rather caustic reckoning with the underlying Fascist message of superhero comics. But idiotic superhero fans missed the point entirely and elevated the reactionary sociopath Rorschach to the status of a sympathetic "anti-hero". The awful Watchmen film from a few years back caters to this mentality.