Comic books mirror much of our recent pop culture, a salient piece of American life. Superhero movies dominate the box offices. Comic-con gatherings overrun convention halls, often attended by over 100,000 fans during a weekend (numbers approached a quarter of a million at a recent New York event). What’s going on here? The influence of comics, superheroes and science fiction offerings such as Star-Trekand Star Warsreveals societal and moral substructures of our culture. Also, devotees of comics and the Star-Trek/Star Warsexperiences find consolation as they escape into worlds where justice, fairness and adventure prevail. Let’s face it: we live in a broken world in which justice and fairness are as rare as five-leaf clovers. And most of us find little adventure during our daily same-old, same-old routines. So, isn’t it nice to imagine worlds in which good triumphs over evil, where justice wins the day, and where human figures do extraordinary things?
Enhanced human figures, demigods if you will, have long made appearances in literature, but since mid-twentieth century the audience for American superheroes has grown each decade. Accordingly, science fiction offerings have also found large and obsessively committed audiences, people who dress up like aliens or costume themselves as archetypical heroes who fly into space to carry on the cause of humanity, if that is what they are doing. Who knows? For reasons hard to understand people glue on Spock ears or show up at exhibition halls wearing a Darth Vader suit. Are they simply modeling the outrageous to get attention, or are they satisfying a wish fulfillment?
What is certain: people daydream about having augmented power, of exploring terra incognita, of doing noble acts, and of defending the cause of good versus evil. As an escape from the mundane and oppressive real world, people may find great joy in entering the world of Ant-Man. And, hey, look up in the sky. Is it a plane or what? Yes, who wouldn’t want to fly like Superman, or scale skyscrapers like Spider-Man? Who wouldn’t want to ride shotgun in the Batmobile en route to put Clayface in his rightful place? Good versus Evil, that age-old battle, is the attraction to most of us. Us versus the Other (humans against objectionable life forms) also plays into central conflicts in most science fiction. Prototypical make-believe, part of childhood development does not halt when one reaches adult status.
Mythical and mystical, comic books have compelling attractions, and for most of the last one hundred years have indeed reflected our wide-ranging culture. Though often hopeful, comics also represent a retreat from confronting our broken world, leading us toward a place that is safe because it is fantastical. It certainly feels good to see extreme justice done on the page or screen when it rarely reaches such verdicts in our real courts and on our streets. Most of us would rather go see Spiderman defeat evil on the screen than work for justice on the mean streets of America. Why?
Because it is harder to live the dream than dream the dream. That’s why.