Bam! Pow! Krakoom! The everlasting allure of the American comic book
[May 16, 2026]
By JOSEPH WILSON
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Pick one up. Be seduced by its glossy cover.
Gaze upon the impossibly muscular body clad in a skin-tight suit. Our
hero or heroine will surely be soaring, shouting, blasting a villain
into next week.
They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the
superhero variety, are 100% American.
Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come
off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese
Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark
back to a departed American age.
Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are
objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in
junk-food version. Candy for the eyes, candy for the mind.
Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32
pages month after month, decade upon decade.
When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and
“cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics
entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling,
decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.
Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given
supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be
flawed messiahs.
They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter
Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great
responsibility." They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to
saving us over and over again.
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Vincent Zurzolo, co-partner of Metropolis Collectibles, holds three
examples of the company's vast collection of comic books in their
offices in New York, Thursday, July 10, 2003. (AP Photo/Gregory
Bull, File)
What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of
justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.
To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths
of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.
Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean
Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to
reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute
Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is
Spidey for a new generation.
Yet the central fissures remain.
Bruce Wayne can't connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the
lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden
of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a
Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.
And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity's
fate than Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur?
If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on
things. Just in case.
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