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The Appeal of Superman

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Plenty of superheroes engage us emotionally, but the emotion that Superman stirs up in us is one of the most fundamental and powerful impulses we have. Jor-El and Lara loved their child so much that they sent him into outer space just on the chance that he might survive. Jonathan and Martha Kent loved their child so much that they adopted him and raised him well despite all the challenges it posed. The entire foundation of the Superman myth was built on love from the very first panel and Superman only exists because of deeply loving acts. Because love created him and because he became a beloved and successful superhero, love is validated and encouraged by the story, because “look what it can lead to!” Every time Superman saves the world, you’re being shown the end result of love. And that makes you want to be more loving towards other people, stimulating your sense of affection. And love is one of the most powerful things we can feel – in fact it may be the most powerful t...
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The Appeal of Shazam

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I believe Shazam/Captain Marvel conveys a tremendous respect for children and for childhood, which encourages us to recover some of our childlike qualities. 1. A wise adult selecting a child as his champion of goodness conveys that children have valuable and heroic traits just like adults. Children are deserving of respect and appreciation as people, and can even be better than adults in certain ways, and the origin of Captain Marvel reminds us of that. I can imagine how flattering it would've been for a child in the 1940s to have read Captain Marvel and been told that being a kid didn't preclude them from being a valuable, deserving person. 2. Billy invokes fictional characters to gain physical powers. This can represent the audience invoking fictional characters to gain personality traits.  There's a reason why the internet is full of workout motivation guides that are all about Batman -- we may invoke Batman to assume his determination, or invoke Gree...
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The Appeal of Doctor Doom

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Why does Doctor Doom complement the Marvel Universe so well? It's because t here's a deep connection between the origin of Doctor Doom and the storytelling philosophy of almost all the Marvel characters from the Silver Age. The crux of Doctor Doom's origin is that his father was a healer, who was ordered to heal the Baron's wife even though it was impossible to do so, and was chased to his death when he was unable to save her life. This led the young Victor von Doom to decide that doing good is unrewarding and only gets you punished by the world, so he puts his intellectual abilities towards selfish pursuits rather than helping the world. He could do plenty of good, but he doesn't see it as worthwhile; so he instead becomes a sort of Baron of his own. This is a perfect complement to the characterization philosophy of Silver Age Marvel. Lee, Kirby, and Ditko were trying to make characters that had real problems, so many of their stories were about peo...
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