America needs its captain

One of America’s quintessential contributions to global culture, alongside jazz (and hip-hop), has been the creation of the superhero.

- BY NEAL CURTIS

Now ubiquitous, the figure of the superhero says so much about the country that created it. A saviour that is bold, brash and colourful, but who nevertheless displays troubling powers and a disconcerting association with violence.

Overall, though, the narrative of the superhero has always been about hope and justice, and despite their exceptional abilities, they have always been characters promoting equality and inclusion. In the pages of Action Comics at the end of the 1930s, Superman was the original social justice warrior. In Superman, two young Jewish men from migrant families created a character who could physically transform the world and through whom they could vicariously live out their own desire for change.