In Laman's Terms: Why Do We Love Superheroes?

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Like many superhero obsessed adults, my love for superheroes was instilled at a young age. But unlike many superhero obsessed adults, the source of my love for superheroes came from an unexpected place. Whereas the source of one's adoration of captured crusaders may conventionally be a specific comic book or movie, mine came from a 2002 children's book entitled I Am Spider-Man. This book was my first ever, and for a long time only, exposure to both Spider-Man and superheroes in general. It was a simple tome, outlining the origin story for how Peter Parker became Spider-Man and what he does on a regular basis as a neighborhood-friendly wall-crawler. The book itself was a formative one for me, but two pages, in particular, in this book stuck out to me then and still lingers in my mind today.


Towards the end of the book, there's this two-page illustration of Spider-Man on top of a vacant roof, with Spider-Man being placed somewhat in the distance to emphasize how he's dwarfed by the world around him. The text accompanying this image was simply "Sometimes, I'm alone." The combination of this visual with those specific words resonated so deeply with six-year-old me. Spider-Man, this mythic figure everyone looked to for hope and saving, he too felt pangs of isolation from the world around him? The idea of a legendary super-powered figure also enduring relatable moments of vulnerability resonated with me then as it does today. With this book and those two pages especially lodged into my brain so deeply, it's no wonder I became fixated on Spider-Man and all other sorts of superheroic characters as I got older.

That same feeling of a grand superhero sharing experiences with the reader was just the sort of thing that led to Spider-Man taking off like a rocket with readers when he was first introduced in the 1960's. Spider-Man's very first appearance in that fateful Amazing Fantasy issue is built upon regret over past mistakes while numerous subsequent stories were built on relatable teenage problems. He was far from the only superhero character to tap into universally recognized experiences of course, with modern-day superheroes like Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel leaning heavily on the experiences of growing up as a Pakistani-American in depicting the characters everyday life as both a civilian and a superhero.

Art is built upon seemingly paradoxical elements fusing together to create something brilliant and superheroes are no exception. They're these larger-than-life figures with superpowers that could never exist in our world, but they're also capable of embodying so much of our own conventional experiences in their adventures. Just look at how Superman allows the world to watch the quintessentially good figure of hope that we wish could exist while that same characters alter-ego of Clark Kent is able to be a vessel for the depiction of commonplace award social experiences we all go through. Fantasy and reality work in tandem with Superman and so many other long-standing superheroes.

That, I believe, is why superheroes, as we know them, have managed to endure so consistently for the eighty years since Superman made his debut in Action Comics. Oh sure, the big splashy fight scenes are enticing too, Lord knows it can be so much fun to just watch superheroes use their differing power sets against each other, but some cool stylized fistfights can only get one so far. Typically, you don't get to become an icon of worldwide pop culture without having greater substance to offer, which superheroes very much manage to offer in their best pieces of storytelling. It's those moments of using superheroes to convey moments of thoughtfulness or resonant pathos are what immediately come to mind when I think of my favorite moments from superhero-oriented media.

Sometimes these moments are small exchanges between normal human beings, like Aunt May telling Peter Parker that there's a hero inside all of us or the various small moments in the beautiful ending of Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 2. Other times, such moments emerge in moments of grandeur fitting for such heightened creations, like Wonder Woman walking into No Man's Land. And then there's perhaps my all-time favorite moment in any art that's superhero related, a page from All Star Superman #10 by Grant Morrison depicting Superman's encounter with a teenager about to take their own life. I stumbled upon this image on social media one day (I believe a post from the excellent writer Siddhant Adlakha brought the image to my attention) and since then, it's been my go-to reference for why Superman as a character and superheroes as a concept are such important creations.

A man capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound and outrunning locomotives saves this young woman's world simply by being there to tell her that she's stronger than she thinks she is. It's a beautiful moment that uses the medium of fantastical storytelling to be cognizant of reality, an act that quality superhero-centered storytelling can do with remarkable skill. That's the kind of skill that serves as the main reason for why I love superheroes, and though there are certainly other reasons why one could adore the concept of superheroes, I think it's this skill, this ability to tap into our own experiences with a fanciful touch, that's made these type of characters so popular in the past and the present. We all may feel alone at so many points in our lives, but knowing that even a superheroic figure like Spider-Man grapples with that same sense of isolation reminds us that we're just a tad less alone in this world. If you ask me, that's a super thing for any piece of storytelling to accomplish.