BW Media Spotlight

The writers of today’s superhero stories don’t believe in the iconic superhero. Look what Zach Snyder was allowed to do with Superman, Batman, and the Justice League. Watchmen has become the standard for how superheroes are depicted. At least the MCU has stayed true to its roots though that’s slowly changed over the years as well, just not in a cynical sense. It seems only superhero shows for kids are willing to let superheroes be heroic. The biggest superhero show right now is Amazon Prime’s The Boys, where the premiere superhero team are really a bunch of jackasses who are really good at hiding it from the general public.

Unless you go to Japan. Tiger And Bunny had superheroes who still wanted to save people and make the world a better place, and I need to watch more episodes of that. Then you have My Hero Academia, a show about training young superheroes and what it truly means to be a hero. Then you have your Kamen Riders, your Ultramen, your sentai/Power Rangers…they may not be traditional Western type superheroes like Tiger And Bunny or My Hero Academia but they still count. Even Spider-Man got his own giant robot in Japan…at least on television. The manga is a lot different.

This is my first exposure to MelinaPendulum (aka Princess Weekes I think) but she has a really good video examining the phenomenon of the more cynical hero versus the more optimistic view of superheroes by comparing The Boys and My Hero Academia as they are the two most prominent examples of superhero stories whose theme is about being a hero. I have some thoughts of my own on the matter. Obviously to those of you who have been here a while. Some swearing in the video.

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