BobtheInquisitor wrote:Superheroes are just another sub genre of fantasy. How do you feel about mythology or epic quests? They tend to intersect quite a bit.
It always blows my mind when Europeans describe some fantastic run of high quality Donald Duck comics.
Being Norwegian I'm very well versed in Norse mythology, as well as Greek and Roman, and I don't see the connection. Implying that there is one, that Thor, Beowulf or Balder somehow correspond to contemporary commercialized American superheroes, is insulting and depreciative of my culture.
To me, super powers just come across as lazy storytelling. It's Batman's shark repellent, or Superman's invincibility, always having either a deus ex machina for a very specific problem, or always being in situations where a particular super power has a practical use. It's dressing up in a bright red and blue leotard to fight crime. It's the continual recycling of old stories, rather than trying to tell new stories with other characters. It's the necessity for violence, because the super powers of the protagonist usually aid him in fights, so the story needs to conclude with the hero punching and kicking his adversary to show off the application of his powers.
Please enlighten me what you mean by "epic quests". I dare say many of Carl Barks' adventure stories, like "The Lost Crown of Ghengis Khan" or "Donald Duck & the Golden Helmet" are fairly epic stories.