Word: superheroics
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...scene; New Yorkers refusing to be terrorized by the Green Goblin sound a note of Let's-Roll-ism. (The American flag filling the screen in the final moments, on the other hand, is as subtle as a black-widow bite.) It might be off-putting, seeing a superhero saving New York, reminding us that there was no one to catch those airliners in his supertensile webbing last year. But Spider-Man's flawed hero fits naturally into a flawed world, where sometimes the best intentions and superdefenses fall tragically short...
...Superman's 64-year journey from Man of Steel to Buffy Boy is just part of the job description. Pop culture changes superheroes to fit the times like a jaded Shakespeare repertory troupe trying to jazz up Hamlet: Batman went from dark avenger to straight arrow to campy TV star and back to dark avenger. So if every generation needs to remake its screen superheroes in its own image, why not just replace them with new ones? Partly because comic books aren't supplying them. After Marvel deconstructed the superhero, the comics' top talents started creating more personal, nonsuperheroic work...
Some of these literary, niche comics have inspired movies: last year's From Hell and Ghost World, this summer's The Road to Perdition. But they weren't introducing new men in tights to the mass consciousness. And with few exceptions, superhero comics became cartoon hackwork. "With Steve Ditko, Spider-Man had these sexual undertones to it that read as being the work of a singular artist," says Clowes. Today's successors, he says, are "just a 10th-generation regurgitation of the same stuff over and over." The comic crowd became older, insular and cultish while kids turned to video...
...ACTION COMICS" NO.1, THE FIRST SUPERHERO BOOK EVER, INTRODUCES SUPERMAN...
...FANTASTIC FOUR," ABOUT A SQUABBLING, DYSFUNCTIONAL SUPERHERO TEAM, BEGINS MARVEL'S REINVIGORATION OF COMICS...