evolving ideology of idea of superheroes blah blah

I think the Nietzsche element in Superman is VERY equivocal and muddied, in that it was of course a creation of a couple of young Jewish lads in the late '30s - I doubt they'd have wanted to be too associated with Nietzsche. I think the fact that superhero comics more or less started with a couple of kids feeling like troubled outsiders, creating a godlike figure to write wrongs, and rather identifying with him, has been the strongest factor in comics ever since - for better and worse.

I like Watchmen much more than you, though I think it's generally overrated. A lot of its political points are made by ancient comic plot devices, including the creation of the fake threat, and I'm not sure how much explicit political intent there is - I think Alan mostly saw a new way of approaching some old characters (did you know that the story was originally about the old Charlton characters whom DC had just purchased, but DC felt it would destroy them?), and saw ways of taking them to extremes. The characters who became Ozymandias and Rorschach are very good examples of this - I think Alan was just extending them in more daring ways, and seeing where that might lead.

Noticing that you could use mutants as a symbol of racism was one of the worst things that ever happened to the X-Men, I think. It's led to countless dreary meaningful (meaning: racism is bad) stories. It was okay at the start, where it was implicit but used lightly, but later and mostly lesser talents have been grotesquely clumsy using it. I think it's rather at the expense of actually addressing racism properly - the Marvel Universe has a just-about-tolerable number of black characters, and the number of stories actually talking about racism is nothing compared to anti-mutant prejudice stories.

yes: to be aware (in the 30s) that FN wz pro-Jewish and anti-German, they'd have HAD to be scholars - at that time the job his (anti-semitic, proto-nazi) sister did on selecting and just rewriting his work after he went nuts was the primary source (and as a result hitler etc the main fan-base)

what's weird is, the version they came up with is probably closer, in its demotic compensatory way, to what he wz getting at (remember he wz a v.unhealthy shut-in plagued by migraines) (cf also: just days before FN went mad totally, he saw a man whipping a broken-down horse in the street - and ran and put his arms round its neck to protect it and burst into tears ----> my favourite FN story)

(my line wd be: the critique is UNCONSCIOUS, contained in the level of "technical" choices and contradictions sedimented in attitudes towards good comix work, rather than overt = clumsy and larded-on-later expressions/discussions/dramatisations at the level of dialogue or moralistic endings or whatever)

so while routine imperialist racism looked down on lesser beings, anti-semitism was abt jealousy from (as it felt) below

(i've never read an x-men comic so have nothing to say abt how well this idea is tackled)

the shift from atomised (and lonely) solo warriors to GROUPS is v.interesting also, given its american (= notionally "individualist") context: cf jazz then rock then rap groups in pop (also buffy) (obv)

Since the MARVEL AGE the basic model for superhero teams has been the workplace. The Fantastic Four is talked about as a 'family' but it's more like a 'family firm'. The Avengers and JLA are basically super-offices.

the problem with all this stuff is i have lots of potentially interesting critical angles and have not actually done any of the empirical homework (haha as buying too many comics is now known)

:(