I think we’ve entered a “agree to disagree” zone. My take, put succinctly, is that children’s literature isn’t a genre - it’s an audience. HP and LOTR are equally valid entries in the fantasy genre, but target different audiences. That’s no different to me than fantasy targeting teen girls or middle-class housewives dreaming of wearing tramp stamp tattoos and dating werewolves and vampires.
And I can’t say I agree that comics were targeted towards kids. Recall that the early history had a pretty big fracas where people said they weren’t appropriate for kids; the entire industry had target failure? They were written for a broader audience and kids latched onto it. Pretty much the case with all genre fiction. I read a lot of mysteries and science fiction as a kid - damned little was written for me. In fact, I’d have never read Encyclopedia Brown if he didn’t share a surname.
As I argue above, I think comics always sought an audience beyond kids. What Stan Lee did was change the template everyone was using, sometimes caused the Patriarch Ideal - rich white professionals helping the common man in a sort of timeless universe that reset every month. Lee still had plenty of those guys (Tony, Reed, Matt, etc) but he broadened the scope of protagonists in age and social group, and gave them the problems of the common man to help the audience identify with them. That never really worked for me, btw. The Patriarch’s were life’s lottery winners - who wants to see them grouse about rich people problems? Marvel made it worse, by making them incompetent neurotics who’d won life’s lottery in a different way (super powers).
Marvel’s real contribution to maturing the genre was the ongoing storyline, which came later. It was pretty much VOTM (villain of the month) stories with maybe a two-parter before then.
Well, if you feel that superheroes are a power fantasy, than it makes sense to have some rich ones. Being so rich that you can afford to buy entire skyscrapers is another valid fantasy.
I don’t know if we are dealing with a “feeling” here, it seems more of a “thought” to me, and a good one. The origin of superheroes was DEFINITELY a power fantasy … just look at the name. Teenage boys being forced to behave as children when their hormones are exploding and their bodies are getting bigger and more muscular and their minds are becoming more capable, would OF COURSE dream of becoming mega-strong, mega-smart, invincible heroes who would astound EVERYONE with their powers. Maybe power fantasy is hitting the nail on the head, as far as a term describing the genre goes.
I wasn’t disagreeing with superhero comics being a power fantasy. I don’t disagree with your post. I was only disagreeing that being wealthy shouldn’t be a part of that.
I agree “feel” wasn’t the right word for me to use.
They target different audiences because one is written as a children’s book and the other is written for adults. Young adults have been reading adult books for a very long time, but children seldom do. Harry has a huge child entry audience, LotR has a huge teenage entry audience. And for good reason.
I don’t recall, because the early 50s fracas was a long time away from “early.” Most historians put the first comic book as 1933’s Famous Funnies. Superheroes came later and co-existed with animal comics throughout the 40s. The attempt by EC (and its imitators) to appeal to a more adult audience was made because sales of kids’ comics had dropped after the war. It’s true that comics were popular with GIs during the war and retaining or wining back that audience was part of the plan - lots and lots of war comics were produced - but for all their attention the “adult” comics were never a major sales factor overall. Kiddie fare of all types crashed them.
This is something a lot of us have come to figure out from doing superhero role-playing-gaming. (Champions, DC Heroes, Marvel Role Playing, etc.) Being insanely wealthy is very, very similar to having a “super power.”
I was reading a superhero book recently (one of the Wearing the Cape series) where one mentions this in relation the a super-power registration movement - that it’s basically like being rich or really smart in affecting the amount of good or bad someone can do.
The superhero genre on Amazon is interesting, in that lots of it is just sci-fi that has people with powers. Many don’t fight crime or help others, most don’t wear costumes. Just having powers gets the stories lumped in, even stuff that was once traditional SF like telepaths and telekinetics.
Either one could, if they wanted. There are such things as jetpacks, just incredibly less practical than the ones depicted in fiction. But they’re within the means of a billionaire like Adelson or Buffet.
Ross Perot is the closest thing to a billionaire super hero that I can think of. I’m thinking of his arranging a rescue of 2 EDS employees locked in an Iranian prison. On Wings of Eagles - Wikipedia
Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of Ross Perot’s politics or conspiracy theories. I welcome other examples. I’ll note that Perot hired another guy to carry out the heroics, which was highly practical in the real world where hostage extraction is a specialized skill like anything else.
Other examples: Bill Gates and George Soros are 2 hands-on humanitarians, but while that is laudatory it isn’t quite the same as throwing cars around. Probably better, but not the same. Branson is an interesting character, but his spaceships aren’t yet superior to those of big guv, though someday they may be more economical.
Was there any mystical stuff in the 80s Beauty & the Beast, though? Other than Vincent, whose freakishness was, I think, left unexplained, I do not recall any.
Wasn’t there an underground alchemical lab in one story?
It’s been a long time, and I didn’t watch it regularly (probably caught one episode in five) but I had the impression there was a recurring low level of mystical mumbo.
