The Spandex Index

Superheroes are now so deeply entrenched in popular culture that their stories rarely feel surprising anymore. We know the costume, the secret identity, the moral code, the battle between good and evil. But was it always like this?

Writing these lines on a beach in Cyprus, I’m aware that ancient myths had already given us figures like Heracles, Achilles, Samson, and Gilgamesh: larger-than-life characters with extraordinary strength, divine origins, or heroic destinies. In many ways, they feel remarkably close to modern superheroes. But they were never called superheroes, and they did not belong to the cultural machinery that would later turn the superhero into a genre.

Robin Hood and Zorro also come to mind, but while they had the costumes, secret identities, heroic missions, and dramatic public personas, they lacked superpowers.

So: close, but no cigar.

The Golden Age of superhero comics in the US began at a very particular historical moment. Stories about heroic figures with extraordinary abilities were becoming a widespread genre just as the country was emerging from the Great Depression and entering World War II — a period marked by economic anxiety, political uncertainty, and hunger for symbols of strength, justice, and moral clarity.

It makes sense that many superheroes of that era (Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, and Captain America) were written as clear heroic protagonists. They were defined less by inner conflict than by courage, duty, and an almost unwavering sense of right and wrong.

But after World War II, the cultural appetite began to shift. Superhero comic books gradually declined in popularity, and the industry came under increasing scrutiny. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent argued that comic books had a harmful effect on the children who read them, turning public concern into a moral panic. The issue became serious enough that the US Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held hearings on the possible link between comic books and juvenile crime.

So does this mean that the popularity of superhero stories depends on the zeitgeist?

Superheroes never really disappeared after World War II. They remained popular among certain audiences, especially comic-book readers and genre fans. But before Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s triumphant rise in 2008, they had not yet become the dominant shared language of mainstream popular culture.

There had been major successes, of course. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films with Tobey Maguire were hugely popular, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy proved that superhero stories could be treated with seriousness and cinematic weight. But the MCU was something else entirely. Its scale, momentum, and cultural dominance — peaking, arguably, with Avengers: Infinity War in 2018 — put it in a different league.

So what was it? What was the spirit of that decade that made audiences so eager for superheroes again?

After the financial crisis of 2008, trust in institutions was fragile. Politics felt more unstable. The internet was no longer something we visited; it was becoming the atmosphere we lived inside, making everything faster, louder, and harder to process. The world seemed increasingly complex, while ordinary people often felt increasingly powerless within it.

And the new superheroes were different from their Golden Age predecessors. They were not pure symbols of moral clarity. They were wounded, arrogant, funny, lonely, traumatized, and frequently wrong. But when the moment came, they acted. They assembled. In that sense, the MCU did not simply bring superheroes back into the mainstream. It translated them for a decade that wanted power, yes, but also direction, teamwork, and the reassurance that chaos could still be met with courage.

Looking back now, though, after everything that has happened since 2018, those years no longer look quite as turbulent as they felt at the time.

Fittingly, the MCU’s decline began around the same time that The Boys in 2019, and then Invincible in 2021, pushed superhero stories into full genre deconstruction.

They leaned into the “what if” territory and asked what might actually happen if people had superpowers — if they were not automatically noble, wise, or morally prepared for them. What if power did not reveal heroism, but vanity, cruelty, insecurity, corruption, and the terrifying randomness of ordinary human impulses?

I haven’t finished Invincible yet, but The Boys finale felt sad in its own way. What started as a superhero parody quickly slipped into political satire, and then became a parody in and of itself.

Now, as we seem to be heading into another decade of uncertainty, I genuinely believe that no superheroes are coming to save us this time.

Yes, superpowers are a useful metaphor when you write about power imbalances, complicated moral choices, and the burden of having more agency than everyone around you. But a metaphor can only stay alive if it keeps changing. Once it becomes too familiar, it stops revealing anything new.

So maybe it is time to turn to something else for a while. I’m sure superheroes will return; they always do. But right now, it feels more exciting to explore other stories, to find inspiration and hope elsewhere.

Maybe the best stories right now are the ones without anyone strong enough to fix things.