The Atlantic: Superhero Worship

The Atlantic magazine has a major piece of movie superheroes this month: "Superhero comics have been around since Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer ruled the back lot, but only recently has Hollywood realized the natural connection between superhero comics and movies. It’s not just that both are simultaneously visual and verbal media; that formal connection would apply equally to the “serious” graphic novels and sequential art that want nothing to do with crime fighters in form- fitting outfits. Cinema isn’t just a good medium for translating graphic novels. It’s specifically a good medium for superheroes. On a fundamental, emotional level, super�heroes, whether in print or on film, serve the same function for their audience as Golden Age movie stars did for theirs: they create glamour."