NOTE: This article is the final part of a series. Captain America is the member of the Avengers who is most obviously wearing a costume. It’s not a battlesuit or a uniform. It’s not the cultural garb of a mystical race. It’s a costume. This is significant, because his costume indicates his deepest identity as…
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The Avengers: Clothes Make the Iron Man (Men in Tights, Part 3)
The other big superhero film this year was The Avengers, or Avengers Assemble, as it was known in the UK. The reason for the name change was to avoid confusion with the old TV series, but that still didn’t stop thousands of people all across the Internet thinking it was funny and saying, “The Avengers?…
Spider-Man: Totem and Tragedy (Men in Tights, Part 2)
[NOTE: This is Part 2 of a column series titled Men in Tights. For the introduction, see Part 1, “Batman: Daemon with a Cape.”] Spider-Man is another superhero whose origin is steeped in tragedy. When scrawny egghead Peter Parker is granted superpowers by a radioactive spider-bite, he decides to make some money by working as…
Batman: Daemon with a Cape (Men in Tights, Part 1)
Let’s face it, superhero costumes aren’t the most practical attire ever invented. If you’re going to fight heavily armed criminals, why the hell would you choose to wear brightly coloured spandex and a movement-impeding cape? The bright colours would draw the eye of anyone with a machine gun or death ray, and the cape would…
Subversive Superhero: The American Dream of Captain America
Captain America is a far more subversive character than people tend to realize. Since his revival by Stan Lee in the ’60s he has often been used as a vehicle for critiquing American society.
Unnamable but Not Undrawable: The World of Lovecraftian Superheroes
A Search for the Heroic in Lovecraftian Fiction, Part Three In Part One of this series I set out to demonstrate that it’s possible to find aspects of optimism and heroism in H. P. Lovecraft’s stories. In Part Two I looked at how a number of other writers, and also filmmakers — including Robert E….
Everything Old Is New Again (If You Don’t Look Too Hard)
I was reminded recently of something my English teacher once told me. In the middle of the English lesson he fixed me and my classmates with a solemn stare and imparted this great truth about literature and creativity: “There is nothing new under the sun.” I nodded. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” Fortunately my teacher…