Superheroes as Art

They've become culturally significant.

From a story in Bloomberg...

More important, it also captures a significant shift in public attitudes, one with big economic consequences. Contemporary adult audiences simultaneously recognize the artifice and fantasy of the superhero world and appreciate its imaginative pleasures. Straightforward escapism has replaced scorn, embarrassment and defensive irony.

As a result, superheroes have become cultural staples -- the subjects of billions of dollars in merchandise, video games, television shows and, of course, blockbuster movies, including four of this year’s top 20 box office hits so far.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in 1966, a Newsweek feature on the then-cutting-edge Pop movement declared that “not only is it permissible for adults to read pulp comics, it is a sociological necessity.” Far from making superhero comics legitimate adult fare, however, the Pop moment left them stigmatized as camp -- the Zap! Pow! Holy Ridicule! of the short-lived “Batman” TV series. Comic fans generally loathe that show.

“They made people laugh at Batman. And that just killed me,” writes Michael E. Uslan, the executive producer of the contemporary Batman movies, in his memoir “The Boy Who Loved Batman.” As a child, Uslan writes, he vowed “to restore Batman to his true and rightful identity as the Dark Knight ... a creature of the night stalking criminals from the shadows.”

As a producer, he fulfilled that vow with Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman,” demonstrating that superhero stories, if done with conviction, could be enormously lucrative.