I was looking into some of the older batman comics and I wanted to know more about the personal politics of the writers. Frank miller, moore, etc, and needless to say I didn’t really find much in that regard.
I posted an article above; just as an example to what kind of info I could find about that subject. I’m not satisfied.
Like are superheroes just a right wing ideal? That issues in the world need (a few) very powerful people in order to solve instead of just systematically solving them?
Or is that the superheroes we do have are made by people with rightwing leanings?
I wouldn’t say that they’re right wing per se, but they’re most certainly reactionary figures. They’re inherently defenders of the status quo in most iterations of superhero stories, made to protect the existing order against the radical change represented by the villain.
There’s an incredible article by David Graeber that dissects the nature of the superhero, you should definitely check it out: https://thenewinquiry.com/super-position/
One rebuttal I’ve heard to your argument (a rebuttal I find weak tbh) is that the supervillains are just so evil that their threat to the status quo must be stopped. I don’t like it bc all we get are evil villains who -conveniently always- threaten to change the status quo for the worse (with indiscriminate violence and destruction.) We never see villains that want to change the status quo for better.
Actually, there have been many famous villains who want to change the status quo for the better. But they always pull some Pol Pot move and blow up an orphanage or massacre a retirement home because…. ANARCHY!!!
For example, in the latest Batman movie, The Riddler spends the whole movie slowly exposing the city’s elites and how Bruce Wayne benefits from his family neglecting orphans and cozying up with the mob to murder investigators. Then Riddler just decides to flood the entire city lol.
I mean it’s how Cao Cao defeated Lu Bu, why not
But we also dont see a hero who has the same level of creativity as the villains. So they are reaccionary regrdless of who the villain is.
That’s a choice made by the authors though