There is room for a successful argument that mainstream comic book superheroes have never been heroes and have always been champions of the status quo. I get this argument and can even see its merit. This is not my argument however.
My argument is that once Miller’s Dark Knight stuff broke all sales records there has been a constant downward spiral of even this level of “heroism” and that post-Miller mainstream superheroes are today essentially just sociopathic costumed clowns.
Silver age Superman was a complete asshole. Comic book characters change and more over time.
I like the comic about Lex Luthor. If I was a regular human in the DC universe I would side with Luthor. Superman is an all powerful alien who has showed up to earth and is meddling and telling humans what they are allowed to do and not do. If Lex Luthor is powerful enough to conquer earth, Superman has no right to stop him. If Superman had landed in ancient times, would he have stopped Alexander? Would he have stopped Caesar from crossing the Rubicon? What right does Superman have to stop the mightiest human from ruling over humans?
Anyways, after that comic I started to see Superman and the Justice League the way Vaught is in the boys, just a corporation of gods, and us little people just have to accept them and their constant destructive feuds, and hope they don’t squish us.
I wouldn’t. Luthor isn’t someone to follow just because he shares your genes. He’s a narcissistic asshole who should have taken a bullet to the brain like Elon Musk should have years ago. For very much the same reason (though at least unlike Elon, because this is fiction and billionaires can be this, he is competent).
I feel like this would have been more true had it been posted 20-30 years ago. But while there’s some sociopathic types in books today, it’s a relatively small portion of the total.
I’d be curious to see what books in particular you have in mind, maybe from those published in the last month or so. I suspect what you really mean isn’t sociopath, but non traditional-heroic-archetypes. Which I would agree with, protagonists these days tend to be more humanistic rather than god-like.
No, you’re right. It kinda ties in with all this reimagining and deconstructing thats been going on lately. Doesn’t help that the most popular superheroes like batman are the original super heroes, batman, superman, spiderman. How do you keep coming up with new Superman storylines after decades? You change superman.
There is certainly an element of truth to this, but it doesn’t explain why everything post-Miller had to become “dark and gritty and sociopathic”. Except that to me it says something about the people who want this.
