From primary-coloured, straight guys to tarnished beings in a revisionist world, superheroes are our cultural barometer.

From the blog post: “They’re our Greek myths,” says Laurence Maslon, the author of Superheroes!: Capes, Cowls, and the Creation of Comic Book Culture. “But the difference, is, they’re no longer what the Greek myths were to the Greeks – they’re what they were to western civilisation centuries later. We know them so well now. They have outlived the intent of the original. And there are people who grew up with them, seven-year-olds who are 57 now. They don’t want to throw them away, but they want to interpret them through the lens of their own time.”