Scans_Daily

I think what many forget about stuff like MIRACLEMAN and WATCHMEN back then was that we were used to looking at Superman, and certainly many DC heroes, in that well-they-know-best way. Which I think was one form, in children's pop, the internalization of the soft totalitarianism of the West took then(which was much subtler and more successful, but very much there), a kind of fatalistic optimism only possible when you believe the world could be destroyed instantly. But superheroes are no longer, basically, parent figures. They very much were then, one of the reasons DC started running up against squarehood in the late 60s through the early 70s--DC characters were parental protectors. You could imagine BEING Spider-Man.

What the above works were addressing was that, but now we see different aspects in the fore because they kind of shattered that very flat good vs. evil polarization DC once took for granted. But then chose to wallow with it rather than run, sadly. But think of this Superman and then think of the observational isolation and distance of Dr. Manhattan, or of Miracleman once Mike Moran is out of the picture.