Hellboy, Kingdom Come, Powers, and Invincible

Having already read Watchmen, I decided to pursue other comics dealing with the modern superhero. Overall, I feel that we are bored with the old superheroes for their near faultlessness and unwavering personalities. Batman gave up everything in his life for the pursuit of his vigilante justice, Superman never met a challenge he couldn't overcome, and so on. However, Hellboy is a demon who fights for love and justice... and often he fails. He picks the personal choice over the “better” choice, which is how we like to see our heroes now. Flawed. In Powers, the comic is about the portion of the police force that has to deal with superpowers. In that world, their “Superman” equivalent is literally insane with power. How does the mortal, superpowerless world cope with such a character? In Invincible, the main character is a teenager, whose dad is a superhero. He joins the world as a superhero of his own, only to watch his dad betray the planet, kill the “Justice League” equivalent and flee the planet.

Our obsession with the superheroes I think stems from our inability to effect change on our own. One person can make a difference, but it's rare that they do make a difference. The idea that a single person could be empowered to affect change is a wonderful concept. However, the old views on them were these kind of infallible, perfect beings (Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, even the old Charles Xavier). These characters were great for a time, because it talked of the better portions of us. However, now, we like to recognize the flaws in those characters, because it makes them MORE human, and thus, more like us.

Even our movies, such as Hancock and Iron Man really rely on the flaws of the main characters to portray the story, and how their flaws actually make their jobs more difficult. The idea that everything is easy when you are superpowered is flawed, and we now like to emphasize how flawed it can be.