In the nature of recent discussions, we have covered the space opera and the necessity of compassion in art. Now it’s time for some comfort food: superhero stories.

Given last weekend’s release of “The Dark Knight Rises” on the heels of this summer’s Marvel double-header of “The Avengers” and “The Amazing Spider-Man,” the saturation of the market with stories of humans battling terrific odds due to genetic abnormalities or financial circumstance makes for a pertinent question: do we need superheroes anymore?

In the early days of comics, America was in some ways a more brute yet innocent place. A bulletproof Kryptonian prince was at one time a relevant allegory for the American character, as was the 98 lb. weakling-turned-Super Soldier. As the country emerged from the Great Depression, the saga of a lonely millionaire risking his life and fortune to uplift the little guy helped bring together the stratified masses in the wake of a new and horrific war, where unity of a national spirit was crucial to Allied victory. Then Stan Lee’s marvelous mutants foretold the social struggles of the 60s and gave disenfranchised teenagers a positive role model in a smartaleck webslinger, while foretelling the backlash against industrialism with the dastardly Norman Osborn as Spidey’s sometime nemesis.

All of these archetypes of a wholly American nature once made sense, but we are such a fractured people whose values no longer fit in the social spandex of neon tights and body armor, the cape of justified vigilanties tarnished by a foreign policy built on profiteering robber barons as opposed to humanitarian goals. If we are no longer the heroes that could inspire fantastic tales of moral and ethical glory, perhaps we should take the cautionary tales of later comic artists and writers a bit more to heart.

Alan Moore and Frank Miller, the titans of 80s graphic novels, offered a grittier take on the superhero that took less from a superhuman obligation to use mysterious powers on a humanitarian mission, but instead out of a need for atonement or misanthropic vengeance. This embrace of the anti-hero as the more compelling meter of justice indicates the change in social consciousness from the “Gee, golly, aw shucks!” Golden Age of Comics of the Forties to the politically charged indictments of society of the Silver Age.

For the first time, comic readers were given the faith to accept the inherent darkness and degradation of an individual given the task of protecting humanity not from some phantom force of evil, but from its own worst tendencies. Despite his neo-Nazi leanings and vicious hatred for humanity’s inequities, Rorschach is probably the greatest comic book character ever if only because he proves an awkward axiom: in spite of the presence of the most socially reprehensible traits in a human being, he can be the idealistic hero who says all of the things we fear to admit we feel and will use the methods of terrible justice to which we have silently complied to fend off the enemies of the American ideal (cough, cough).

For better or worse, the motto of “By any means necessary” cannot be allowed to foul the waters of our gleeful escapism. Sure, it was fun to see a foul-mouthed Batman with a license to kill exacting the sort of sadistic, broken revenge cycle he so long deserved in “All-Star Batman and Robin,” but from a more pragmatic perspective, the lack of care for human frailty in the face of, say, petty theft is a somewhat disproportionate and clownish social platform even more ridiculous than the campy Adam West incarnation of the 60s or Joel Schumacher’s 90s double shot of garish fail.

So again I pose the question: if we are so morally and ethically ambiguous to no longer delineate heroes from villains in the real world, how can we trust caricatured mockeries of extreme good and evil from becoming the realities of tomorrow? I’m not insisting that some cabbalistic clans of ubermenschen will be imbued with powers and use our world as a catastrophic playground, but the more subtle issues that have always underpinned the stories of comics — generosity over greed, altruism versus personal happiness — may tip to the negative side of the scales with no more stones on the side of good to balance them again. Our fantasies, as a nation and a species, have an odd frequency of materializing in ways we least expect, and if we accept such depictions of polar good and evil we might just forget the greatest of lesson from the less violent age of comics — the ability to forgive and reform, rather than eradicate and forget.

— Jake Lane is a graduate in creative writing. He can be reached at [email protected].