Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2025

Abstract

Comic book superheroes have been widely discussed as modern mythology: in other words, as a modem version of what religious mythology was for cultures in which it was alive. I shall argue, first, that comic book superhero stories are not remotely an analogue to religious myths. As it happens, however, cultures for which religious mythology is alive do offer us other conceptual resources that we lack for fully understanding our own comic book superheroes. These resources belong to a different part of the general conceptual package which goes with cultural engineering of a living mythology. On the positive side, then, I shall explore this path to understanding what these superheroes are instead. I will argue both my negative and positive cases with respect only to the mythology of ancient Greece. Let me stress that ancient Greece, to its specifics, is by no means representative of all or even any other cultures with a living mythology. Each such culture will have its own, incomparable conceptual setup, and each needs its own study. But, ancient Greece offers one path that should be enough to show the general kind of difference in conceptual domains between genuine mythology and what superhero comic books express, and to show the importance of that difference. In additions, it offers the particular missing conceptual resource I have mentioned.

Comments

© 2025 International Journal of Comic Art. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.

Download

Share

COinS