On the Literary Use of Superheroes; or, Batman and Superman Fistfight in Heaven

• Autores: Isaac Cates
• Localización: American literature: A journal of literary history, criticism and bibliography, ISSN 0002-9831, ISSN-e 1527-2117, Vol. 83, Nº 4, 2011, págs. 831-857
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Cates's essay considers the benefits and constraints of genre within superhero comics and recent alternative comics that make use of the figure of the superhero. Individual superheroes (Batman, Superman, Spider-Man) emerge as nearly allegorical figures for particular ideas or ideologies; the figure of the superhero more generally is also figured in these works as a symbol of arrested maturity, both within the fictions and within a larger metafiction about the genre. Works discussed in detail include Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986), Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen (1986-87), Mark Waid and Alex Ross's Kingdom Come (1997), Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan (2000), and Daniel Clowes's David Boring (2002) and "The Death Ray" (2004).