the Dept of Science said:
Just curious, maybe someone could answer me...
How come superheros and comic books are so synonymous?
Discounting films, you very rarely see superheros in any other medium, and the majority of comic books/graphic novels are about superheroes (with notable exceptions obviously). I realise that superheros really originated in comics, but that was decades ago, I would have thought that they would have diverged a lot more since then.
We were watching a movie that is the Lone Wolf comics as movies ( shogun assassin? i believe ) -
which, much to your point, was shown to me by a friend with no idea what the comic was.
Then we watched "Kung Fu Hussle" , and I realized the Kung FU & Anime style takes up the same "head space" as comics and superheroes ( and Harry Potter ) - substitute CHi for magic or super powers.
I wrote elsewhere that gamers my age ( old ) might well remember when D&D's parent company was first bought out to where it no longer belonged to gamers ( later it was bought back by other gamers, who lost control of the company again, last I knew, it belonged to Hasbro.. sigh )
Point being, in this time period, we watched the game change from mostly a "pulp" feeling - gritty fantasy with a touch of horror - and be re-marketed to a greatly sanitized, "lighter" set of worlds , as the powers that were went after the 'comic book' demographic.
I won't say there wasn't the possibility of becoming "superheroic" in the game before that - there was - but the game's focus increasingly changed towards that, and it was up to the "indies" to be the exceptions.
The short answer is, with exceptions like Harry Potter, we, at least in America, have expected a less "childish" atmosphere / premise form our books (serious) than from our cartoons and comics kung fu and wrestling ( lowbrow ) - I'm not saying it's entirely reasonable, just that it's the overall consensus/expectation
This is why Watchmen or V for Vendetta, comics more "serious" than most "literature"; or Harry Potter, a book "for" younger readers, seem "surprising" to the culture at large with it's expectations.
You often run into this trying to explain to people ( especially Americans ) this cartoon is NOT for children.
Moviebob had a feature that delved into "why" and what this head-space addresses- I won't parrot him with less skill ( if you're interested I'll try to figure out which it was)-
but I think you'll find these two main factors continue to dictate the phenomenon you observed.
