Since September 11, 2001, comics and comic book superheroes have become more popular than ever. I remember seeing Spider-Man in theaters and being awed by the sight of him swinging through the canyon streets of New York City. I believed that Spider-Man could be a real person, and that this fictional New York could be the same as the one I had visited so often. My excitement was dampened by Ang Lee’s Hulk (which I still find groan-worthy in its cheap direction) but rejuvenated by Spider-Man 2. For me, however, Batman Begins set a new tone and direction for superhero movies. And this trend has continued, strongly, making studios clamor for the rights to comic book characters in the hopes of cashing in on the superhero boom. But the genesis of this “boom” is really the heart of this article. In a world saturated in familial and economic crises, bitter politics, war, terrorism and lack of safety, people have turned to fictional heroes with fantastic powers to fill the need for real heroes in their everyday lives.

When the shift occurred from realism to fantasy, the superhero genre found the niche it had been waiting for

To be clear: I’m not diminishing the efforts of “heroes” as we’ve defined them. My father was a police officer for 22 years. My sister and her husband are both New York City police officers. One of my personal mottos is “Everyone hates the police until they need them.” I also have friends and former students who have served in the military, some of who are currently serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These people should be commended, daily, for their courage and bravery. So I’m not trying to diminish their efforts, but I am trying to point out how a societal shift has led to the reawakening of the superhero.

Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, two Jewish artists, created Superman in the early 1930s and then sold him to DC in 1938. Here is a man who could solve the woes of the Jewish people simply. He isn’t like most people. He’s alien. He’s from a home that doesn’t exist anymore. He struggles for acceptance, yet has to hide his true identity from the public. Superman represented the end of the problems for the Jewish people. Captain America appeared in 1941, the same year the United States entered World War II. Again, here was a character who could single-handedly end the war, if only he were real. Stan Lee has created a myriad of characters: Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Daredevil and the Avengers. These characters were “normal” people who were given abnormal powers and had to make a moral choice to use these powers for good. All of these characters were created in a post-atomic