How to Read Superhero Comics and Why

"And why? This is quite a challenging book, taking comic books very seriously and applying literary theory to key comics of the 1990s. It has especially good analysis of Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns . The argument is that comics work through a process of one period replacing another. So the superheroes of the golden age and silver age, from the 1940s to the 1960s, replaced the pulp heroes of the 1930s – the Spider, Doc Savage and so on. Then the Marvel superheroes of the 1960s replaced the DC ones, and new characters in the 1990s in turn replaced the Marvel ones. So it goes in phases. The book talks about the anxiety of influence – how every new creation has to come to terms with the figures that inspired and shaped it, and overcome them like a father figure."