Sorry about the long post but I felt like writing after reading an NRO article on how the latest Superman flick was an exploration in Christian or Mosaic symbology... I discussed it with my wife and I said I've always preferred Marvel characters over DC ones. Here's my explanation.
One of the things that I've always dug about Marvel comics characters is that they are FLAWED characters. They are unsure of their place in the world. They are doubtful of many things and things aren't always certain. They feel angst. In other words, they are like you and me. Take Iron Man for example. Iron Man (Tony Stark) had serious daddy and substance abuse issues. Obviously gifted, he is as much a prisoner of his own success as his own personal demons. Played by Robert Downey Jr (a dude with his own very public fights with personal demons), Iron Man becomes more than a shallow celebration of CGI technowizardy--it becomes an examination of how broken people can come to grips with inner forces that threaten to destroy them. From pending implosion, we get to explore the search for purpose, meaning, and calling in a world that's still far from perfect. In short, Iron Man's trope is all about finding beauty in the imperfect, in the unstable, in the unfair.
You don't get that same vibe with DC characters. In particular, Superman. Superman epitomizes human perfection. He's so perfect that he can't be human. And he isn't-he's from Krypton. This sums up the problem with human ideals. We lift our ideal so high that no one can identify. No one can embody them. Except deities and philosophical abstractions. The problem I see with this is that disembodied ideals alienate people. It makes our own goodness pale next to the unreachable concepts of perfection. We are all made to feel less worthy. When saints get idolized so much we only achieve the frustrating realization that we can't be anything but sinners. We create a psychic prison where we constantly compare ourselves to something that doesn't exist-and isn't capable of existing. We set ourselves up as philosophical Houdinis of some sort-twisting ourselves up knowing that we threw away the key.
The latest Superman movie did a great job of trying to make Superman's story more understandable and easier to relate to. However, the whole conflict between heroes you can relate to and heroes you can only adore from afar was summed up in this line from the movie: "you fear me because you cant control me and you never will, but that doesnt mean i'm your enemy." One key element of control is knowing that what you're observing exists within you. This statement pushes away any element of self-identification.
One of the things that I've always dug about Marvel comics characters is that they are FLAWED characters. They are unsure of their place in the world. They are doubtful of many things and things aren't always certain. They feel angst. In other words, they are like you and me. Take Iron Man for example. Iron Man (Tony Stark) had serious daddy and substance abuse issues. Obviously gifted, he is as much a prisoner of his own success as his own personal demons. Played by Robert Downey Jr (a dude with his own very public fights with personal demons), Iron Man becomes more than a shallow celebration of CGI technowizardy--it becomes an examination of how broken people can come to grips with inner forces that threaten to destroy them. From pending implosion, we get to explore the search for purpose, meaning, and calling in a world that's still far from perfect. In short, Iron Man's trope is all about finding beauty in the imperfect, in the unstable, in the unfair.
You don't get that same vibe with DC characters. In particular, Superman. Superman epitomizes human perfection. He's so perfect that he can't be human. And he isn't-he's from Krypton. This sums up the problem with human ideals. We lift our ideal so high that no one can identify. No one can embody them. Except deities and philosophical abstractions. The problem I see with this is that disembodied ideals alienate people. It makes our own goodness pale next to the unreachable concepts of perfection. We are all made to feel less worthy. When saints get idolized so much we only achieve the frustrating realization that we can't be anything but sinners. We create a psychic prison where we constantly compare ourselves to something that doesn't exist-and isn't capable of existing. We set ourselves up as philosophical Houdinis of some sort-twisting ourselves up knowing that we threw away the key.
The latest Superman movie did a great job of trying to make Superman's story more understandable and easier to relate to. However, the whole conflict between heroes you can relate to and heroes you can only adore from afar was summed up in this line from the movie: "you fear me because you cant control me and you never will, but that doesnt mean i'm your enemy." One key element of control is knowing that what you're observing exists within you. This statement pushes away any element of self-identification.
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