Graphic novels like Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Dark Knight Returns revolutionize the concept of "superhero". It’s 1964 when Eco wrote it, 20 years before one of the biggest revolutions in the superhero comic books history, the beginning of the Dark Age. By the end of each story, everything is back to normal. In his essay The Myth of Superman, Umberto Eco claims that in superhero comics nothing really changes: this is one of the most characteristic aspects of the superhero who is a status quo defender. Comparing Dark Age’s anti-heroes (Miller’s Batman, Rorschach, V) with contemporary films and comics like The Authority, Civil War, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight, I will show how our perception of anti-heroes and superheroes has changed. I will refer to Nietzschean concepts, such as the mask, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the Übermensch, to distinguish the superhero and the anti-hero, in his relationship with the mask and the society, in his morality. Superheroes’ relationship with the mask, with society, becomes much more problematic and "anti-heroic". The classic superheroes have begun to kill – the latest Batman and Superman films are emblematic. The line between superhero and anti-hero becomes confused. We are not just witnessing a new proliferation of anti-heroes: even superheroes and the way we perceive them are changing. The historical moment is comparable to the Dark Age. Marvel’s Civil War, saga directly linked to the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent PATRIOT Act, is probably the most emblematic example, an ideal beginning of this new Age. Antiheroes become more and more numerous, and superheroes lose a clear definition. Economic uncertainty, mass migrations, encounters and clashes with different cultures, terrorism: our worldview and our truths are wavering. Today, the western world faces a new crisis. Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, together with Alan Moore’s Watchmen and V for Vendetta, are the graphic novels that more than any other represent this transformation. A profound social transformation that inevitably brings with it a crisis of certainties, morals and values. The so-called Dark Age follows a profound crisis in American society, marked by the Vietnam War, the fear of nuclear conflict, but also by alternative cultural and social movements. During the 1980s these characters have their greatest success in superhero comics. The anti-hero embodies competing values on the one hand, he is born of a crisis, on the other exasperates it, leads it to the extreme consequences. Collects DETECTIVE COMICS #742-753.Unhappy is the land that needs an anti-hero: a land in crisis, without a clear moral, without truths. But that fragile status quo is threatened when Ra’s al Ghul and his shape-shifting accomplice, Whisper A’Daire, spur the city’s gangs into a turf war over a mysterious serum that offers eternal life to whoever drinks it…Comics legend Greg Rucka (WONDER WOMAN, BATWOMAN) with artists Shawn Martinbrough (THIEF OF THIEVES) and Steve Mitchell (THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN) bring Batman and his city back from the brink of destruction in this first volume of the sequel to the best-selling epic BATMAN: NO MAN’S LAND. Crime and gang activity are still rampant, and tensions are growing between factions of Gothamites who remained in the city throughout the military cordon and those who evacuated but are now returning to their homes.With so much at stake, Batman and the police department have their hands full maintaining the newly restored peace. The people have returned and law has been restored-as much as it ever can be in Gotham. After spending a year cut off from the rest of the nation as the lawless “No Man’s Land,” Gotham is rebuilding.
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