Despite "Cosmopolis" director David Cronenberg's recent assertion that superhero movies and themes are for kids, a look at the most provocative news stories of the day suggest otherwise.
Outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, protesters in Guy Fawkes (or, as some media refers to them, "V for Vendetta") masks decry the "persecution" of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (himself looking like someone from James Bond central casting):
And around the world people are donning ski masks in support of recently-convicted & sentenced Russian punk band Pussy Riot:
Globally, the iconography of the mask is being employed as one of rebellion, free-thinking, anarchy, and protest -- while at the same time co-opted by others as a symbol of darker things, a warning against this very same rebellious impulse in society:
At any rate, the idea that superhero and "comic book" themes do not deserve serious study or treatment is pointedly ridiculous. From political activists to the much-underestimated phenomenon of "real-life superheroes" to mass killers, the imagery of Comics is all around us -- sometimes used to inspire, sometimes used to terrify...and sometimes used as an inscrutable mirror of our own ever-mutating, ever-contradictory selves:
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