Relevance

Although it's been linked a bunch of other places, I fully recommend Jess Nevins talk on turn-of-the-century anti-hero backlash (specifically the pulp heroes such as Doc Savage). What I found most interesting is how he explicitly states that comic book superhumans managed to avoid this fate by decoupling from relevant issues of the day and focusing on the fantastical. Now, there's a lot of pros and cons to that decoupling, but it is interesting to consider where that leaves big two comics - either completely divorced from reality or subject to fickle public fads. Neither extreme would be healthy.

Discuss